I. Biodiversity and Biotechnology: Debate as Distraction

The struggle for human survival, so successful that it now consumes 20 to 40% of the solar energy captured by plants,¹ has cast a gloomy shadow on almost all other forms of life. "Half the world's species will be extinct or on the verge of extinction" by the end of the 21st century.² The death toll from rainforest destruction alone "might easily reach 20[%] by 2022 and rise as high as 50[%] or more thereafter."³ In its evolutionary impact, civilization has easily outclassed an ice age, or even 20.⁴ In geological terms as well as in a colloquial sense, contemporary mass extinctions "mark[] the end of an epoch."⁵

Amid this evolutionary catastrophe, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development met at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, to fashion two international agreements, a framework convention on climate change⁶ and the Convention on Biological Diversity (sometimes referred to as the Biodiversity Convention).⁷ Although global warming may in time land an even more devastating blow,⁸ this Article will focus on more direct efforts under the Biodiversity Convention to stem the tide of extinctions. Crippled by the lack of U.S. cooperation, the Biodiversity Convention has weathered nearly a decade of controversy over the relationship between biodiversity and biotechnology.