Ensuring the incorporation of biodiversity in the World Trade Organisation

April 26, 2005

There is an urgent need for concrete steps to achieve mutual supportiveness between the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). That is the conclusion of Martha Chouchena Rojas (IUCN) and Ricardo Melendez Ortiz (ICTSD), the facilitators of a workshop on the linkages between the international trade and biodiversity regimes during this year's annual WTO Public Symposium. Of particular urgency are the discussions related to access and benefit sharing of genetic resources, traditional knowledge and trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS). The workshop was organized by a consortium of CIEL, ICTSD, IDDRI, IUCN, and QUNO.

Paragraph 44 (o) of the WSSD Plan of Implementation gives the CBD the mandate to negotiate an international regime "to promote and safeguard the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources." Such sharing, based on biodiversity conservation, can enhance the living conditions of the poor.

However, several areas of controversy about implementation need to be resolved. For instance, efforts must be made to ensure coherence at the national and regional level as well as with related global regimes such as the WTO (especially TRIPS), the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which all address certain aspects of either traditional knowledge, benefit sharing and intellectual property rights.

In light of the upcoming WTO Ministerial Meeting at the end of this year, the workshop provided a forum for trade negotiators, NGOs and private sector representatives to discuss these issues. In particular, the workshop addressed in more detail the mandate of the WTO TRIPS Council which is instructed to consider the relationship between the WTO TRIPS Agreement and the CBD, and whether and how patent applicants should disclose the origin or source of the genetic resource and traditional knowledge used in an invention and provide evidence of prior informed consent and benefit sharing.

The speakers did not only address disclosure requirements at the international level among the various global regimes, but also provided participants with insights and practical examples on how to operationalise disclosure requirements at the national level in a manner supportive of the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD.