Conserving genetic resources, access and benefit-sharing, intellectual property and climate change

Abstract

Climate change threatens the survival of important genetic resources across the globe. This means that conservation is an imperative to maintain the diversity of genetic resources and avoid the permanent losses of these valuable results of evolution. The regulation of genetic resources is presently addressed through a patchwork of international and domestic regulations, with the key agreement being the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity. This agreement and its protocols expressly recognise intellectual property claims in the context of conserving and exploiting genetic resources. This paper reviews the role and place of intellectual property and seeks to answer the question: is intellectual property actually helping to promote conservation? The paper concludes that existing regulations may be overly complex, and that the evolving regulatory schemes have now moved on to address complex issues of development, sovereignty, customary law and human rights.