Protecting Biological Diversity: The Effectiveness of Access and Benefit-sharing Regimes (review)

Over the last few decades, as global populations and associated development have increased, the world has witnessed increasing threats to biodiversity. While the term biodiversity has its origins in biology, or more specifically conservation biology, the importance of biodiversity is recognized widely "as the foundation on which the ecosystem functions" (p. 11). Beyond ecosystem functions, however, biodiversity hotspots (i.e. centers of diverse ecosystems) are prized as locales for genetic materials central to research and development within commercial industries of agribusiness, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Demand has increased trade in natural resources for genetic material, increasing threats to global biological diversity, particularly in developing nations. Efforts to address the need for these resources and the peril of overexploitation led to what would, in 1992, become the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

In Protecting Biological Diversity: The Effectiveness of Access and Benefit-sharing Regimes, Carmen Richerzhagen offers an analytical framework for measuring the effectiveness of the CBD, through programs of access and benefit-sharing (ABS) in Costa Rica, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and the EU. In each case study, Richerzhagen builds upon primary and secondary literature, empirical data collected by the host countries, NGOs, and researchers, and information collected through qualitative research that included interviews of stakeholders, experts, and key informants.

Richerzhagen provides an extensive literature review of discussions surrounding the evolving history of ABS under the CBD. She suggests that while assessments of ABS are not new, most do not provide comprehensive review. Assessments working from largely legal and policy perspectives neglect economic questions, and vice versa. Most assessment approaches work from the supply side, and thereby fail to develop a comprehensive evaluation that accounts for both supply and demand or for the complexity of those bi-or multilateral relationships. In seeking a more comprehensive approach, Richerzhagen reviews the effectiveness of ABS programs to enhance the conservation of biodiversity, facilitate access to genetic material, and enhance fair and equitable benefit sharing, including the prevention of misuse and misappropriation of biodiverse resources.

In the assessment of ABS through each case study, Richerzhagen develops an analytical framework that accounts for the assignment of physical and intellectual property rights, asymmetries of information between user and supplier country (e.g. nature of research, potential benefits, uses, or patents tied to a genetic resource), the quality of governance in provider countries, administrative complexity (including institutional capability and transaction costs) of the program, and market structures. Through these analytic benchmarks, she shows that, if properly articulated and implemented, benefit sharing provides potentially important incentives for conservation.

In each case study, Richerzhagen also reveals how breakdowns in one or more of the components of the analytical framework might threaten the success of an ABS program. For example, while the Philippines has spent years attempting to implement ABS, its efforts have largely been ineffective. Although the Philippines provides a comparatively positive example of attention to issues of physical and intellectual property rights, Richerzhagen notes that the Philippines case founders on information asymmetry, which she calls the "strongest critical factor for this case" (p. 150). The breakdown arises from issues such as providers expecting higher benefits than researchers or users are willing to provide. On the user side, users could not be sure that their investments would be properly directed toward shared benefits or environmental protection, as regulations are not concrete or clearly formulated.

In Costa Rica, the ABS program largely succeeds thanks to a stable government and a political system that favors bioprospecting and is simultaneously relatively successful at protecting physical and intellectual property rights. Conversely, in the case of Ethiopia, weak systems of property rights protection, coupled with generally unstable governance, make ABS implementation difficult despite the existence of a potentially effective agency for biodiversity management (The Institute of Biodiversity Conservation). Where the first three case studies assess the provider side of the equation, the EU case (Germany) provides the reader with an examination of the user dimension of ABS. In this context, where governance is stable and scientific research is a cultural...