How the CBD was won

How the CBD was won-2
[Rosendal G. K. 2000. The Convention on Biological Diversity and Developing Countries. Kluwer.]

The major issues
Preservation or Conservation?
Include just wild species or domesticated species too?

Everything coalesces around rights to genetic resources.

OECD countries wanted conservation, which is understood to include the human interface.
However, "conservation" was becoming more like "preservation," so some felt a need explicitly to include use of species, both wild and domestic in the CBD.

A draft on management of wild genetic resources was presented by the IUCN in 1981. This draft emphasized in situ preservation of wild species and included no domesticates. The USA presented to the UNEP a version of this agenda.

Developing countries view the inclusion of domesticated species in the CBD as related to long-running discussions, in the FAO, on property rights to genetic resources. [A brief history is tabulated here]

In the FAO Undertaking of 1983, seeds were considered to be the "common heritage of mankind." However, given that in 1989 the FAO determined that intellectual property rights (IPRs) were compatible with the idea of genetic resources as "common heritage of mankind," developing countries returned to the idea of genetic resources as a matter of national sovereignty --i.e., they have the sovereign authority to determine access to genetic resources.

Changed property rights regime
"Non-exclusiveness (based on the common heritage of mankind principle) for all genetic material, to exclusive rights (patents) for parts of the genetic material."

The North had most of the benefits due to technological ability to use biological resources
The South had most of the costs of conservation of biological diversity

In seeking to manage biodiversity, "the (primary) users of the resource ask the (primary) owners to change their behaviour -- to conduct resource conservation and submit to stricter regulations."

How get the "owners" to talk?
How get the "users" to share the responsibility?

The Scientific issues

uncertainty regarding causes and effects
agreement regarding seriousness of problem

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R. Geeta This page last updated on August 23, 2003