Accessing Biological 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.

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.

Interest in the commercial value of genetic and biochemical resources is burgeoning. Virtually no precedent exists for policies and legislation to govern and regulate what amounts to a brand new industry. This report provides guidelines for establishing policies for biodiversity prospecting.

Debates about Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) have moved on in recent years. An initial focus on the legal obligations established by international agreements like the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the form of obligations for collecting physical biological materials have now moved to a far more complex series of disputes and challenges about the ways ABS should be implemented and enforced: repatriation of resources, technology transfer, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions; open access to information and knowledge, naming conventions, farmers’ rights, new schemes for accessing pandemic viruses and sharing DNA sequences, and so on. Unfortunately, most of this debate is now crystallised into apparently intractable discussions such as implementing the certificates of origin, recognising traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expression as a form of intellectual property, and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples. Not everything in this new marketplace of ABS has been created de novo. Like most new entrants, ABS has disrupted existing legal and governance arrangements. This collection of chapters examines what is new, what has been changed, and what might be changed in response to the growing acceptance and prevalence of ABS of genetic resources. Biodiversity, Genetic Resources and Intellectual Property: Developments in Access and Benefit Sharing of Genetic Resources addresses current issues arising from recent developments in the enduring and topical debates about managing genetic resources through the ABS regime. The book explores key historical, doctrinal, and theoretical issues in the field, at the same time developing new ideas and perspectives around ABS. It shows the latest state of knowledge and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of intellectual property, governance, biodiversity and conservation, sustainable development, and agriculture.

Addressing the management of genetic resources, this book offers a new assessment of the contemporary Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) regime. Debates about ABS have moved on. The initial focus on the legal obligations established by international agreements like the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the form of obligations for collecting physical biological materials have now shifted into a far more complex series of disputes and challenges about the ways ABS should be implemented and enforced. These now cover a wide range of issues, including: digital sequence information, the repatriation of resources, technology transfer, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions, open access to information and knowledge, naming conventions, farmers’ rights, new schemes for accessing pandemic viruses sharing DNA sequences, and so on. Drawing together perspectives from an interdisciplinary range of leading and emerging international scholars, this book offers a new approach to the ABS landscape; as it breaks from the standard regulatory analyses in order to explore alternative solutions to the intractable issues for the Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources. Addressing these modern legal debates from a perspective that will appeal to both ABS scholars and those with broader legal concerns in the areas of intellectual property, food, governance, Indigenous issues, and so on, this book will be a useful resource for scholars and students as well as those in government and in international institutions working in relevant areas.

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.

This book presents the issues surrounding the conservation of wildspecies and ecosystems used by people. It is aimed at final yearundergraduate and master's students taking courses in conservation,environmental management, ecological economics and relatedsubjects, as well as conservation professionals, includingmanagers, policy-makers and researchers. The structure of the bookis ideal for a course in conservation, comprising a theoreticalsection written by the authors, and a set of ten contributed casestudies intentionally diverse in discipline, geographical regionand system of study. The theoretical section provides the knowledgethat is needed to understand the issues, while the case studies canform the basis of seminars. Readers will emerge with a clearrecognition of the difficulties of limiting the harvesting ofbiological resources to sustainable levels, and of the boundariesof sustainable use as a conservation tool. The authors, an ecologist and an anthropologist, have bothworked on the conservation and sustainable use of wildlife forseveral years, including the ivory and rhino horn trades. The first book to examine the issues underlying thesustainable use debate in a fully interdisciplinary manner. Boththe theoretical section and the case studies approach the issuesusing methods from economics, ecology, anthropology and otherfields Designed as a course textbook, combining a theoretical sectionwith invited case studies written by expert practitioners in thefield Outlines the new direction that conservation biology (and thusconservation biologists) must take if it is to be successful