Ontology and Law: Bioprospecting in Antarctica

Sammanfattning: Could it be that even though no international treaty or regulation regulates bioprospecting in Antarctica, some features of the techno-science of bioprospecting already lie embedded in the deep texts of the potentially most relevant treaties and regulations? If so, international law already to that extent comprehends the phenomenon, making for sustainable governance and thereby sustainable development. To find out, first an ontology of bioprospecting was synthesized, by an activity theory based conceptual system modeling (CSM). Treating bioprospecting as an activity of search for and research of naturally occurring biota, a set of Conceptual Graphs and associated Tables were drawn up as its ontology-synthesis. Features of this conceptualization were then searched for by an ontological-analysis of the deep texts of selected twenty-five legal instruments, through an ontological legal research (OLR). Search results did unearth several features dispersed and intriguingly embedded in several of the treaties and regulations, quite richly in some of the more recent ones. The cross-application of CSM followed by the hybridized OLR, is a methodological innovation and the generated empirical results of each are resources for further research. The language of international law is revealed as possessing a surprisingly better-than-expected techno-scientific literacy of bioprospecting.