The Great Challenge: Energy Supply by Hydroelectric Power Plants or Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge Heritages

ELIZABETH FERREIRA DA SILVA, PATRICIA PEREIRA PERALTA
Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Industrial

This article intends to discuss the alternative towards the bio-based-economy, in contrast to the hydroelectric power plant dam under the perspectives of immaterial and material patrimonial goods respectively the traditional knowledge and the biodiversities looses.

Brazilian hydroelectric power plant trade off, as a response towards a clean and renewable matrix energy to face the world climate change, has yet contributed to the social and environmental damages, and also to the depletion of natural resources, which affects negatively the world climate change. It is not only the natural patrimonial losses caused by the biodiversity damage in the dam area, but also the increase of the amount of carbon dioxide and methane gases due to decomposition of organic material and absence of the forest area to capture carbon dioxide that contributes to increase the global warming. In addition, environmental preservation is essential to preserve immaterial heritage, as cultural and social relationships are dependent on the physic space to be maintained and passed to future generations. The indigenous traditional knowledge, as an immaterial heritage, is an open source towards the bio-based-economy, and for that reason has a tremendous value to Western civilization.

Natural ecosystems and the living organisms are the success keys for the bio-based-economy towards the development of products and new industrial processes, in an eco-efficiency manner, to prevent depletion of natural resources and, consequently, towards a sustainable world economic growth. In fact, biodiversity, as material heritage, will provide subsides to a sustainable industrial , as it is the barn of living organisms in equilibrium ecosystems that may provide the tools for the biotechnology towards the sustainable industrial products, processes and production systems. The complementariness of the material and immaterial heritage is essential to assure the survival of forest and its dwellers and so the survival of the biodiversity and traditional knowledge.