Biopolitics structures neocolonialism—capitalist expansion requires exploitation of resources via biopiracy

Biopolitics is as old as the organization of the first cities, when the term was used, more specifically, in relation to the way the State appropriated the bodies and sexualities of its citizens, in order to sustain a determined political and economic model. But, with technological evolution, the center of the political dispute has changed, becoming biological life and the possibility of "making" or "modifying" it in its essence, which had never occurred before in history. With this change in focus, biopolitics added new issues, that is, new material-biological realities, such as cells, chromosomes, molecules, genes, which, in the case of biotechnology, for example, have economic utility and become a desire for appropriation by large capitalist corporations. In this context, technique, science and industry, which are intimately related, become pillars of the economic system1 . The true dimension and conception of biopolitics was born with Foucault, in his work "The Birth of Biopolitics". Based on an examination of the modes of domination operated by the practices of local biopowers in the context of Nazism and socialism, the author brings the vision of the constitution of the newest technologies of domination, elaborated at the level of market economies under the aegis of the economic neoliberalism of the Chicago School. Thus, there emerges what he calls the figure of the homo economicus that transcends the individual's autonomous juridical-political personality, making the individual a simple pawn of the globalized market's economic rules. In this way, the homo economicus becomes an economic agent, who responds to the stimuli of the market logic and assumes the responsibility for the constitution of his professional capital and for the maintenance of his competitive capacity in the labor market, which will be made possible and potentiated by the manipulation of biogenetics, possibly beyond any ethical discussion2 . In light of this new paradigm, biopolitics has become a field that allows the aggregation, approximation and association of sectors of reality related to life, nature and knowledge, whose changes over time have been provoked by industry, science and technology, which today dispute the global politicaleconomic field. Thus, among the sectors of reality and branches of science that can be grouped in the field of biopolitics are biotechnology, genetic engineering, biosecurity, biopiracy, the water problem, the privatization and computerization of knowledge, the accelerated development of biomedicine, scientific experiments, the artificiality and commodification of human reproduction, research using embryonic tissue, and bionanotechnology. These sectors are part of an economy and a politics that transform life and nature as a whole into market slices and objects of commodification3 . This study focuses on the issue of biopiracy, which can be defined as the illegal exploitation of natural resources, including plants, animals, seeds and any other source of genetic material, from national forests, with the intention of using this material for commercial, medicinal or cosmetic purposes, together with the appropriation and monopolization of traditional knowledge of traditional peoples and communities for economic profit4 . In the latter case is the characterization of the current mode of colonization, where large international corporations send employees disguised as "emissaries" to countries that hold a wealth of biodiversity, in order to find out for what purposes and functions traditional local peoples and communities use this biodiversity. Thus, they appropriate this knowledge and then claim that they have invented something that has actually been used for a long time by these populations .5 On the other hand, it is possible to do this in a legitimate way, through the Sharing of Benefits, which consists of sharing the benefits derived from the economic exploitation of finished products or reproductive material developed from access to genetic heritage or associated traditional knowledge6 . However, this sharing of knowledge is not always done in a legal way and, unfortunately, all the biodiversity existing in Brazil, as well as the knowledge of the traditional peoples and communities about it, have attracted the action of international biopiracy, which is considered the third largest traffic in the world7 . Biopiracy has become a multi-billion dollar business, with Brazil being one of the main targets of this criminal business. In light of this, the losses suffered are great, and are related to the loss of knowledge and bioproducts. This damage is estimated at R$ 33.3 billion per year and is linked not only to the illegal trade in genetic heritage, but also to the financial loss for not receiving royalties resulting from the patenting that these corporations do, of active ingredients present in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and other products, which are obtained from the Brazilian biodiversity and the knowledge of traditional peoples and communities, which are registered in other countries .8 Given these facts, the general objective of this study was to verify whether the Brazilian government has been defending the right of traditional peoples and communities to benefit sharing, as well as how it acts in the fight against biopiracy, which can be considered a crime against the country. The methodology used for this article was the deductive method , which starts from general arguments to particular ones. It was established as sources of consultation books, doctrines, articles and legislation , many accessed via the Internet, through specialized sites such as Scielo, CAPES, Google Academic, the Public Domain, the Library of the Federal Senate and others. This research also had a qualitative approach to the data collected, with a descriptive objective, where the content was evaluated seeking a more global understanding of the information, favoring its quality and its context with the theme.