Sharing traditional knowledge: Who benefits? Cases from India, Nigeria, Mexico and South Africa

Abstract

Benefit sharing is a relatively new area in international law, given that the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was only adopted in 1992. However, the history of formal benefit-sharing agreements between the users and the providers of traditional knowledge goes back beyond the adoption of the CBD. This chapter outlines indigenous peoples' rights in the context of access to plants, animals, micro-organisms and associated traditional knowledge, and discusses four paradigm cases: The Kani people (India); Niprisan (Nigeria); the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group project (Mexico), and the San/Hoodia case (southern Africa). These cases straddle the historical boundary between unregulated and regulated access to non-human biological resources, and are thus highly instructive in terms of lessons learned, best practice and emerging policy challenges for the access and benefit sharing regime of the CBD.