A Filière das plantas medicinais no Brasil: um breve recorte a partir de abordagens econômicas dinâmicas

Abstract

The context of this dissertation is marked by the increaseofthe interest for medicinal plants both for consumption and for research, the establishment of guidelinesforproductionandcommercializationofmedicinalplants, both as food products and as phytotherapeutic products andalsofor the present discussion ofthe intellectual property and access/useofthe genetic resources ofBrazil. Therefore, it also is inserted in the discussion about undue appropriationoftraditional knowledgeassociated with the useofmedicinal plants and the political, ethical andeconomical issues originated from the bioprospecting and/or biopiracy. From this workit was aimed, in a introductory way,to identify and maptherelationships betweentheagents of an outlineofthefilièreofmedicinalplantsinBrazil.The basichypothesis states that there is anasymmetryofinformation andspecific assetsamong the actorsof thefilière,whichenablesthe supportoftheappropriationofthe gains byactors withthe greatest bargainingpower, due to adysfunction regulating andinducing the development in the institutional sphere. The approaches utilized were from the Theory ofTransaction Costs, the Evolutionist Theory and the TheoryofCorporate Coherence. The data collectionwasperformedby startingfrom thedelimitationof 16key-actors in the states ofParaná, Riode Janeiro and São Paulo and from the institutional picture. The techniques employed were the interview and the non-participant observation. Theanalysis ofresults wasorganized in the following categories: Perceptionsrelative to nature, Perceptionsrelative to the institutional picture and Perceptions relative to the filière. It follows that the two factors whichaíTectedthe mostthe transaction costsandwhichend updefíningthe choice of the contractualarrangements by theconcerns in thesample of thefilièrestudied, are theuncertaintyand thespecificityof assets. Toface this reality, the mainforms ofcoordination found by the actors were the mixedand the hierarchical arrangements, in which,the bilateral contracts and theintegration initiatives prevail. It maybefound among the actors studied, that there is a differentiatedconjugation of the factors which afifect the transaction costs withthe diíferent forms of governance, which corroborates the basic hypothesisofthis work that an asymmetryofinformation andspecificassetsamongtheactorsof thefilière exists.