Direitos socioambientais dos camponeses: os impactos e as implicações jurídicas da contaminação genética de sementes crioulas por transgênicos

Abstract

The debate on the protection and preservation of agrobiodiversity is one of the most important environmental issues today, as the genetic erosion of biological diversity in the environment increases. The main cause is the violent advance of the commodification and destruction of natural resources by agroindustrial capital, which imposes a homogeneous agricultural system through the technological package of transgenic seeds that has an impact on agricultural biodiversity and the associated sociocultural diversity. A process in which the State corroborates with instruments of legitimacy, since economic relations determine legal relations, and in this way, the legal system turns to regulating the agricultural system of commodity production, granting intellectual property protection to industrial seeds, while restricting an age-old practice of peasants of saving their seeds for the next crop. In addition, it leads to the informal production of native seeds by peasants. The conflict between socio-environmental rights and individual commercial interests involving seeds is aggravated by the advance of genetic contamination of native seeds, resulting in losses and damages that go far beyond the issue of production. In this sense, seeds, which are the heart of agriculture, constitute a territory of conflict and control. Thus, the research aims to identify the impacts and legal implications on the socioenvironmental rights of peasants in relation to the problem of genetic contamination of native seeds by transgenic seeds. The methodology adopted for the research was exploratory-descriptive, using bibliographic and documentary sources to collect information and data. And as a method of approach, the historical-dialectical materialist is used, in which the analysis of the historical process of economic and social development is considered to understand the relations of production that condition the creation of the current legal-political system. As a result, we identified that native seeds are essential to guarantee the conservation of agrobiodiversity and food security; the practice of the Popular Peasant Movement reaffirms the socio-environmental rights of peasants; that the legislation that aims to regulate the production and commercialization of seeds is geared towards serving the formal market of industrial seeds and establishes requirements that are difficult for farmers to achieve; genetic contamination causes direct harm to farmers of an economic, productive, cultural and legal nature, and also indirect harm to society as a whole and constitutes a violation of the right of farmers to biodiversity and the state's duty to protect the Environment with regard to preserving the integrity of the genetic heritage; and finally, that there are no effective institutional actions to curb the genetic contamination of Creole seeds, since the coexistence norm is insufficient and ineffective.