Author: Luigi Guarino

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has an on-line decision-making tool to help you work your way through Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) arrangements ¹:

Under the Bonn Guidelines on Access to Genetic Resources and Fair and Equitable Sharing of the Benefits Arising out of their Utilization, of the Convention on Biological Diversity, companies commit to sharing benefits of the use of genetic resources with host countries. Through its SECO funded Access and Benefit Sharing project, IISD has led the development of the “Access and Benefit Sharing Management Tool”– a voluntary tool for implementing the Bonn Guidelines.

It seems quite thorough. For example, it includes discussion of how the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) fits into the larger ABS picture.

Kathryn over at Blogging Biodiversity suggests that treating biodiversity like a string of sausages — one set of rules for agrobiodiversity, another for medicinal plants, a third for microbes perhaps, etc. — may not be such a good idea. She recognizes that there are very good reasons why agricultural biodiversity should be treated in a different way to medicinal plants, for example, but is worried about this being the beginning of a nasty slippery slope. But the ITPGRFA is international law, whatever its faults, and the wider biodiversity ABS community is slowly learning to live with it.