Genetic Resources and Biopiracy: A Critical Analysis of Access and Benefit Sharing Mechanisms Under the International and National Biodiversity Laws

Access and benefit sharing (ABS) is one of the important objectives of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and, with 195 countries and other governmental and NGO’s being part of the Convention, the principle has gained international relevance. Articles 15, 16, and 19 of CBD deal with ABS, however, it was only in 2002, through Bonn Guidelines that a systematic ABS was institutionalized. Additionally, in 2010, CBD came up with another important protocol giving more importance to access and benefit sharing objectives at Nagoya, called Nagoya Protocol. The parties to the Convention modeled their ABS mechanisms based on these guidelines and protocols, each country has its own access and benefit sharing mechanism. The paper propose to analyse the ABS mechanism from six domestic jurisdictions, namely, Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, South Africa, Kenya and India. In this paper, the authorswill try to understand the core policies behind the ABS mechanisms of this selected countries.