Accessing Biodiversity And Sharing The Benefits

The book aims to address the lack of information on the experiences of others by providing a comparative analysis of national access and benefit-sharing laws and policies in the 41 Pacific Rim countries that signed the CBD. It provides key insights on the main characteristics of selected access and benefit-sharing (ABS) policies and laws, their development, and implementation process. It contains a detailed comparative analysis of existing laws and policies. It presents four case studies of countries with regulations in place and contrasts them with four case studies of countries that are struggling to develop their regulations. It ends by discussing options of an international regime on ABS and a summary analysis of the main lessons and recommendations from the study.

Globally, local and indigenous approaches to conserving biodiversity, crop improvement, and managing precious natural resources are under threat. Many communities have to deal with 'biopiracy,' for example. As well, existing laws are usually unsuitable for protecting indigenous and traditional knowledge and for recognizing collective rights, such as in cases of participatory plant breeding, where farmers, researchers and others join forces to improve existing crop varieties or develop new ones, based on shared knowledge and resources. This book addresses these issues. It outlines the national and international policy processes that are currently underway to protect local genetic resources and related traditional knowledge and the challenges these initiatives have faced. In particular these themes are addressed within the context of the Convention of Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The authors broaden the policy and legal debates beyond the sphere of policy experts to include the knowledge-holders themselves. These are the 'custodians of biodiversity': farmers, herders and fishers in local communities. Their experience in sharing access and benefits to genetic resources is shown to be crucial for the development of effective national and international agreements. The book presents and analyzes this experience, including case studies from China, Cuba, Honduras, Jordan, Nepal, Peru and Syria. Copublished with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Originally published in 1999 The Commercial Use of Biodiversity examines how biodiversity and the genetic material it contains are now as valuable resources. Access to genetic resources and their commercial development involve a wide range of parties such as conservation and research institutes, local communities, government agencies and companies. Equitable partnerships are not only crucial to conservation and economic development but are also in the interests of business and often required by law. In this authoritative and comprehensive volume, the authors explain the provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity on access and benefit-sharing, the effect of national laws to implement these, and aspects of typical contracts for the transfer of materials. They provide a unique sector-by-sector analysis of how genetic resources are used, the scientific, technological and regulatory trends and the different markets in Pharmaceuticals, Botanical Medicines, Crop Development, Horticulture, Crop Protection, Biotechnology (in fields other than healthcare and agriculture) and Personal Care and Cosmetics Products. This will be an essential sourcebook for all those in the commercial chain, from raw material collection to product discovery, development and marketing, for governments and policy-makers drafting laws on access and for all the institutions, communities and individuals involved in the conservation, use, study and commercialisation of genetic resources.

Stoianoff (law, University of Wollongong, Australia) collects contributions from lawyers, scientists, and policy makers on issues related to the use of biological and genetic resources for commercial and scientific purposes. While emphasis is on the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Interna.

In Incorporating Indigenous Rights in the International Regime on Biodiversity Protection, Federica Cittadino convincingly interprets the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its related instruments in light of indigenous rights and the principle of self-determination.

The Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Commission), at its Seventeenth Regular Session, requested to prepare a survey of existing legislative, administrative and policy approaches, including best practices, for access and benefit-sharing (ABS) for the different subsectors of genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA) and traditional knowledge associated with GRFA (TKGRFA) held by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, with the aim of identifying typical approaches and lessons learned from their implementation, as well as challenges and possible solutions. [Author] In response to the Commission’s request, a survey identifying the different types of legislative, administrative or policy measures countries have taken to accommodate the distinctive features of GRFA and subsectors of GRFA and of TKGRFA in their ABS measures was commissioned. [Author] At its Eighteenth Regular Session, the Commission, in considering the Survey, requested the preparation of a stand-alone document providing specific examples of existing country legislative, administrative or policy measures that directly or indirectly accommodate distinctive features of GRFA and associated traditional knowledge. [Author] This publication is Supplement I of the typology of ABS country measures reflecting the importance of GRFA, their special role for food security and their distinctive features. [Author]

During the last ten years the enormous global loss of biodiversity has received remarkable attention. Among the numerous approaches undertaken to stop or lessen this process, access and benefit-sharing (ABS), a market-based approach, has emerged as among the most prominent. In theory, ABS turns biodiversity and genetic resources from an open access good to a private good and creates a market for genetic resources. It internalizes the resources’ positive externalities by pricing the commercial values for research and development and makes users pay for it. Users’ benefits are shared with the resource holders and set incentives for the sustainable use and the conservation of biodiversity. Carmen Richerzhagen, however, finds that in practice there are significant questions about the effectiveness of the approach in the protection of biodiversity and about the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the commercialization. Utilizing the empirical findings of three case studies of biodiversity-providing countries - Costa Rica, the Philippines and Ethiopia - and one case study of a community of user countries, the European Union (EU), Richerzhagen examines the effectiveness of ABS through the realization of its own objectives.