MBABS · Moving beyond the Access to Benefit Sharing

Moving beyond the Access to Benefit Sharing

Many countries worldwide have ratified the Access to Benefit Sharing (ABS) of the Nagoya Protocol under the convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The ABS encourages opportunities to exploit genetic resources and anticipates that benefits can be shared equally and fairly between the knowledge holders and industrial companies. These incentives are believed to encourage biological diversity conservation, the sustainable use of its components, which will further enhance sustainable development towards human well-being. While in theory, the ABS seem to pave the way forward to a win-win situation between the transformers of local genetic resources and the local communities, little is known of what occurs at community level. Yet, attributing Access to Benefit Sharing (ABS) remains a dilemma for most developing countries; only a few have implemented the legislation. At stake are endemic extracted natural resources which are transformed for the national or international markets. As they gain high added value in the cosmetic or pharmaceutical/sanitary companies and corporations working in market chains, local communities seldom benefit from these lucrative transactions. In addition, these directly impact communities negatively which depend on the transformation of these resources for their economic survival and lose control of access over the resources. The main objective of the study was to explore and analyse the factors that determined the attribution of the Access to benefit Sharing (ABS) and how these were implemented at a micro level for the utilisation/exploitation and development of medicinal, aromatic plants and/or herbal formulae by pharmaceutical/cosmetic corporations. It aimed to assess the impacts on the livelihood of mint farmers/growers in India and rural women in cooperatives in Morocco. Despite imposed traveling restrictions to India during the pandemic, the research in Uttar Pradesh was completed with the support of the Department of Botany, Lucknow University, India. In addition, data were also collected in Morocco with women in Argan oil cooperatives. Thus, the MBABS project was completed with minor deviations and offers two lines of research. The first is a quantitative study emerging from the data collection in India; the second, a qualitative study emerging from the data collection in Morocco.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз