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Regulatory Drivers for Greener Products
Published in Al Iannuzzi, Greener Products, 2017
Another area that affects the sourcing of products in a significant way is bio-piracy, also known as access and benefit sharing (ABS) regulations. The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization was an outcome of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The idea of this regulation is to consider “the need to share costs and benefits between developed and developing countries.” In the past, developing countries have had genetic resource like the use of unique plant-based raw materials used for consumer products, like natural ingredients and even pharmaceutical ingredients, removed from their country without permission or even compensation. Approvals and benefits are to occur for the use of these raw materials. Benefits may be monetary or non-monetary such as royalties and the sharing of research results. The Nagoya Protocol creates greater legal certainty and transparency for both providers and users of genetic resources by sharing the benefit of these resources and making it more predictable for the users of these materials. If you are a product manufacturer and are using ingredients such as natural or botanical extracts which are unique to a specific country, you may be subject to this new regulation (CBD 2016).
When nature goes digital: routes for responsible innovation
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2020
Samples tie data to a certain physical location or specific biological entity: the biotope or the organism from which the data were derived from. This provides a tension with the nature of electronic data, which can be easily distributed globally. Taking locality into account however is necessary to ensure fair access to the data and related benefits, for instance the benefits derived from innovations. Access and benefit sharing is the focus of the Nagoya protocol, which is a global protocol that is implemented on the national level. The protocol's objective is to foster a fair distribution of the benefits derived from biodiversity genetic resources and from traditional knowledge about these genetic resources. This entails the regulation of the access to genetic resources, access to technologies, benefit sharing obligations, and compliance with local regulation (Convention on Biological Diversity 2010). Brazil implemented it’s own framework to regulate access to genetic heritage and associated traditional knowledge for purposes of scientific research, bioprospecting, and technological development. A national system of genetic resource management and associated traditional knowledge (SisGen) was put in place to facilitate compliance with the legislation, by supporting the registration of access, shipment or exploitation of genetic material and associated traditional knowledge. The federal government is the recipient of the benefit sharing via the National Fund for Benefit Sharing. The money in this fund is intended for a multitude of purposes, amongst which the sustainable management and conservation via support for indigenous people and traditional farmers. How exactly this fund will contribute to biotope preservation (for instance by preventing deforestation in the Amazon basin), however, needs to be seen.
The road ahead: narratives and imaginaries of the value of biodiversity in shaping bioeconomy policy in Colombia
Published in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 2022
Biotechnology became an important policy subject for Colombia with the creation of the National Biotechnology Program in 1991, the same year in which a new constitution was forged. In 1996, Colombia joined Decision No. 391 of the Andean Community, which established a common regime for access to genetic resources, prompted by fears of Andean countries missing on the benefits of bioprospecting (Gómez Lee 2012). In this treaty, genetic resources were defined as “all biological material that contains genetic information of value or real or potential use.” Afterward, various reports addressed the potential of bioprospecting for the country, but their recommendations were not implemented (Invemar 2002). The “Bioeconomy” conceptualization arrived in Colombia in 2011, through a regional project with the European Commission.10 The same year, the first “planning” policy instrument focused on biotechnology was introduced by the National Planning Department (DNP), CONPES 3697 – Policy for the Commercial Development of Biotechnology Based on the Sustainable Use of Biodiversity (Consejo Nacional de Política Económica y Social 2011). Its recommendations included the creation of a “national bioprospecting company” and the establishment of a group to grant permits to access “genetic resources.” However, only the latter was adopted, marking an important milestone. Colombia’s entrance into the OECD, a process that began in 2013 and ended in 2020, influenced the emergence of a “green growth policy.” DNP’s Misión de Crecimiento Verde (Green Growth Mission) was implemented between 2016 and 2018 to develop a bioeconomy, resulting in the (not surprising) CONPES 3934 – Green Growth Policy (Consejo Nacional de Política Económica y Social 2018), the first in the country to formally define the bioeconomy, as well as a report by the nonprofit business consultancy Biointropic (2018). Among competing visions of the bioeconomy, the most influential has been its focus on sustainable and inclusive territorial development (Hodson, Henry, and Trigo 2019), answering a need to bring economic opportunities to remote areas of Colombia, by incorporating exotic crops into value chains. Even though conducting bioprospecting in Colombia is not a novel idea, it has gained new light in Colombia’s nascent bioeconomy, which is now being conceptualized as comprising more than bioprospecting.