February 20 is World Day of Social Justice, an opportunity to show how BlueRemediomics partners are working to improve Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS), to ensure fairness and equity in the use of marine genetic resources.
Genetic resources from plants, animals or microbes are genetic material that has actual or potential value. Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) refers to how genetic resources are used and how the benefits resulting from their use are shared between the people or countries providing and/or using them.
Enhancing ABS of marine genetic resources whilst ensuring protection of Intellectual Property is one of the objectives of BlueRemediomics, with ABS International (ABSint) leading Work Package 5 focusing on enhancing access, protection, and sharing of marine genetic resources while emphasising ABS and Intellectual Property (IP) considerations. Additional details on the project’s objectives and work packages can be found on the Project Overview page.
Some of the ABS-related outputs from the project so far include two deliverables, an article on the subject co-authored by Professor Marcel Jaspars from the University of Aberdeen (UNIABDN) which was published by Nature Communications as well as a Policy Brief jointly developed in the framework of BlueRemediomics and fellow EU-funded project MARBLES. The Policy Brief summarises the contexts of international negotiation developments regarding genetic resources and the ocean, it identifies key outcomes, and makes suggestions to EU and state policymakers aiming to inform future choices regarding ABS, IP, Digital Sequence Information (DSI) and their intersections. More recently, the book ‘Decoding Marine Genetic Resource Governance Under the BBNJ Agreement’ was published and is being launched at the International BBNJ Symposium in Singapore this week! The book co-authored with BlueRemediomics and MARBLES partners (UNIABDN and ABSint), provides practical guidance and tools to scientists and policymakers to better understand aspects of the new BBNJ Treaty, which is set to fundamentally change the way biodiversity is governed in two-thirds of the ocean. The two projects are helping to shape new approaches to the governance of marine genetic resources, especially when it comes to supporting a science-based approach to ABS compliance in biodiversity-rich countries.