Making Sense of the Draft Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing for COP 10

Highlights :

- Never before has international equity stood as much in the limelight as it stands today in the context of the access and benefit sharing (ABS) negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The adoption of a draft ABS Protocol at the tenth meeting of the CBD’s Conference of the Parties (COP 10) would make a decisive step forward in influencing the private and public sectors’ involvement in promoting the implementation of the CBD’s benefit-sharing objective.

- However, eight years after the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development’s call for negotiating an international ABS regime, the prospect of potentially failing to adopt an ABS Protocol at COP 10 may cast a leaden shadow on the Convention’s future role in international biodiversity governance. With only few days of negotiations left to Making Sense of the Draft Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing for COP 10 untangle remaining disagreements before COP 10, the consensus to be reached in Nagoya needs to deliver an ABS Protocol likely to capture the value of biodiversity, provide incentives for its conservation and protect fundamental rights of indigenous and local communities, including their rights to traditional knowledge.

- In the absence of low-hanging fruits for a compromise at COP 10, a strong sense of responsibility should guide CBD Parties in deciding the extent to which their negotiating strategies shall be constrained by what a legally-binding Protocol on ABS can realistically achieve to enhance the contributions of biodiversity and ecosystem services to food security, health, human livelihoods and poverty alleviation among others.