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 is published in the Asian Biotechnology and Development Review and
entitled, “Access and Benefit Sharing as an Innovative Financing
Mechanism”. 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.
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