Legislation on forest genetic resources in Latin America

Abstract

Legislation on forest genetic resources management and conservation in Latin America is closely related to the forest policies as applied to the natural resources and forests in general. These policies, widely variables among countries, present, however, common trends in the historical evolution of their objectives. Lately, besides the national forestry policies, international agreements like the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Processes on Sustainable Forest Management, must be considered in forest genetic resources legislation. In spite of the great amount of national and international legal documents, few ones are exclusively dedicated to the forest genetic resources management and conservation. The present works contains a synthesis of the main national and international aspects of the forest legislation in Latin America with emphasis to its relationship with the forest genetic resources management and conservation