Access and Benefit Sharing - An update on the protocol negotiations

Michael Halewood, Head of the Policy Research and Support Unit at Bioversity International reports on the latest events: 

Delegates from more than 100 countries are racing to finalize negotiations of an international agreement that will regulate access to countries’ genetic resources, and how benefits should be shared when those resources are commercially exploited.

The deadline for finalizing the agreement is October 2010, when it is scheduled to be adopted at the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 10) in Nagoya, Japan. Delegations still disagree on a number of important issues, so two unplanned-for negotiation sessions have had to be squeezed in before the October meeting. One was in July and the next is in late September, ending just three weeks before Nagoya. With some luck and a lot of late nights between now and then, it should still be possible to avoid a replay of the disappointing break-down of negotiations for the climate change convention in Copenhagen earlier this year.

If approved, the agreement will take the form of a protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The upside of a well-crafted protocol should be that it will put to rest decades of disagreement about who should be able to get access to genetic resources and under what conditions, disagreements which have pitted northern and southern countries against one another in highly politicized, hotly contested ways.  A possible downside of the protocol – if it is not drafted properly – is that it would have inadvertent negative impacts on research and development projects that aim to achieve food security, by raising the transaction costs of that research so high that it can no longer be undertaken.

Throughout the negotiations, the CGIAR Centres, through the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP), have highlighted the importance of making sure that the protocol does not have this negative effect, and that it both addresses developing countries’ concerns about sharing commercial benefits and also supports the ways in which genetic resources are used in public agricultural research and development. Bioversity International, on behalf of the Centres, has just released two new policy briefs directed at delegates highlighting these issues (see below).

At the July meeting, Bioversity also coordinated two special panel presentations where representatives from national agricultural research organizations, universities and CGIAR Centres shared important technical information with delegates to help them appreciate the importance of making sure that the protocol supports, and does not hinder, the use of genetic resources to achieve food security around the world.

Bioversity will continue to participate actively in the negotiations.

 The importance of recognizing the International Treaty in the CBD’s Protocol on access and benefit-sharing (SGRP 2010). (656 KB)

 Leaving room in the CBD’s ABS Protocol for the future development of specialized access and benefit-sharing arrangements – the example of agricultural microbial genetic resources (SGRP 2010). (592 KB)

For more information, see access and benefit-sharing or contact  Michael Halewood