Approaches To Benefit Sharing

The issue of REDD+ benefit sharing has captured the attention of policymakers and local communities because the success of REDD+ will depend greatly on the design and implementation of its benefit?sharing mechanism. Despite a large body of literature on potential benefit?sharing mechanisms for REDD+, the field has lacked global comparative analyses of national REDD+ policies and of the political?economic influences that can either enable or impede the mechanisms. Similarly, relatively few studies have investigated the political?economic principles underlying existing benefit?sharing policies and approaches. This working paper builds on a study of REDD+ policies in 13 countries to provide a global overview and up?to?date profile of benefit?sharing mechanisms for REDD+ and of the political?economic factors affecting their design and setting. Five types of benefit?sharing models relevant to REDD+ and natural resource management are used to create an organising framework for identifying what does and does not work and to examine the structure of rights under REDD+. The authors also consider the mechanisms in light of five prominent discourses on the question of who should benefit from REDD+ and, by viewing REDD+ through a 3E (effectiveness, efficiency, equity) lens, map out some of the associated risks for REDD+ outcomes. Existing benefit?sharing models and REDD+ projects have generated initial lessons for building REDD+ benefit?sharing mechanisms. However, the relevant policies in the 13 countries studied could lead to carbon ineffectiveness, cost inefficiency and inequity because of weak linkages to performance or results, unclear tenure and carbon rights, under?representation of certain actors, technical and financial issues related to the scope and scale of REDD+, potential elite capture and the possible negative side effects of the decentralisation of authority. Furthermore, the enabling factors for achieving 3E benefit?sharing mechanisms are largely absent from the study countries. Whether REDD+ can catalyse the necessary changes will depend in part on how the costs and benefits of REDD+ are shared, and whether the benefits are sufficient to affect a shift in entrenched behaviour and policies at all levels of government. The successful design and implementation of benefit?sharing mechanisms – and hence the legitimacy and acceptance of REDD+ – depend on having clear objectives, procedural equity and an inclusive process and on engaging in a rigorous analysis of the options for benefit sharing and their potential effects on beneficiaries and climate mitigation efforts.

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).

Key points In the absence of robust national or subnational policies for benefit sharing, land-use change initiatives in Indonesia have developed their own approaches to distributing benefits. At the local level, support and capacity building are needed to strengthen intermediary institutions in order to improve governance and increase legitimacy when deciding how to share benefits.Nonmonetary benefits such as land tenure, capacity building, infrastructure and access to natural resources have been especially important. However, in some cases there are nonmonetary burdens associated with intended benefits.The legitimacy of benefit-sharing arrangements is determined more by the actors involved than the type of land-use change associated with them. Conservation initiatives, REDD+ projects and oil palm initiatives all exhibited both high and low levels of legitimacy in their benefit-sharing arrangements.The legitimacy of benefit-sharing arrangements can be compromised by the lack of broad consultation with local actors including customary authorities, lack of community control over access to land snd limited livelihoods options for communities.

Fewer than 11% of CBD Parties have adopted substantive ABS law, and nearly all of these are developing countries, focusing almost entirely on the 'access' side of the equation. Most of the CBD's specific ABS obligations, however, relate to the other side of the equation-benefit sharing. This book considers the full range of ABS obligations, and how existing tools in user countries' national law can be used to achieve the CBD's third objective. It examines the laws of those user countries which have either declared that their ABS obligations are satisfied by existing national law, or have begun legislative development; the requirements, weaknesses and gaps in achieving benefit-sharing objectives; and the ways in which new or existing legal tools can be applied to these requirements.

This book provides a first-of-its-kind review and analysis of benefit sharing frameworks between extractive industries and Indigenous and local communities in different parts of the Arctic. The authors describe a wealth of case studies in order to examine predominant practices, policies, arrangements, mechanisms and impact assessment methodologies. They also discuss possible ways to improve and advance existing benefit sharing regimes, in order to attain fair and equitable benefit sharing and support sustainable development. Among the topics covered in the book are corporate social responsibility and social license to operate, principles and methodologies of determining compensation, legal and informal frameworks of benefit sharing, community response to extractive activities, and global-to-local linkages that shape benefit sharing processes. The book will be of interest to academics, industry experts, legal specialists, policymakers, community members concerned with industrial activities, and anyone interested in sustainable development in the Arctic.

Drafting Successful Access and Benefit-sharing Contracts gives an insightful and profound analysis of how contracts should be drafted so that biotechnology users and providers of genetic resources get access and become bound to share benefits from use of biological diversity.

The need to regulate access to genetic resources and ensure a fair and equitable sharing of any resulting benefits was at the core of the development of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).