Paper Proposes Access And Benefit Mechanisms To Help Implement Nagoya Protocol

A recent paper proposes that countries use the access and benefit-sharing mechanism of the Nagoya Protocol to ensure conservation action and effective implementation of the protocol.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity entered into force in October (IPW, Biodiversity/Genetic Resources/Biotech, 10 October 2014).

The paper, published in the Asian Biotechnology and Development Review and entitled, “Access and Benefit Sharing as an Innovative Financing Mechanism,” is available here. It suggests innovative ways to build access and benefit sharing (ABS) models.

“We need to stop looking at ABS through the lenses of the Nagoya Protocol negotiations where the focus is to prevent biopiracy at all costs,” it says. “Instead we now have to start viewing ABS as an innovative financing mechanism than a regulatory burden.”

The authors are Balakrishna Pisupati, senior research fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, and Sanjay K Bavikatte, a fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, UNU-Institute of Advanced Studies in Japan.

The paper encourages countries to prioritise “modest but steady revenues from ABS over infrequent but big pay offs.” It also calls for prioritising “cooperation over competition when it comes to shared genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge.” And it proposes to prioritise “incentives over penalties to motivate compliance with ABS laws.”

The paper, citing another study, says: “If over 50 per cent of pharmaceutical products in the market now are derived from genetic resources or inspired by natural compounds, the global market for pharmaceutical products alone should hold enormous resourcing potential for prospecting based financing for biodiversity conservation agenda.”

This paper is being made available for distribution with special arrangement from the Asian Biotechnology and Development Review.

 

Image Credits: Flickr Tim Hamilton