Zugang zu Pflanzengenetischen Ressourcen für die ... - Genres

Survey of property rights and conditions of access to genetic resources on the international level
enhance their own seed material. These concerns are valid. Countries which provided the basic
germplasm on which research advances were built, should partake in the resulting benefits.
How such benefits should be shared, will depend on the interests of the parties involved. Benefit
sharing arrangements could take many forms, monetary compensation being only one of them.
The disappointing rate of technology transfer should not be ascribed to deficiencies in the free
exchange system. Developing countries generally have given insufficient priority to agricultural
research and have provided inadequate funding and staffing for it, thus lacking the research
infrastructure necessary to absorb new technologies.
Some would also argue that if only developing countries provided effective protection of
intellectual property, this would encourage more effective dissemination of research products in
the developing world. One should also expect it to kindle private sector breeding activity of which
there is little in developing countries, as it has previously done in industrial countries.
Thus, while the need for renouncing the proven policy of free exchange of germplasm in
international research cannot be demonstrated, political pressures will lead to its abandonment.
3 Towards A New Set of Rules in International Research Collaboration
Efforts have been underway for some time to internationally codify the access to, and use of, plant
genetic resources. In 1983, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
established a set of rules known as the "International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources". 9
Essentially, it is an attempt to stop or slow the rapid and uncontrolled disappearance of crop plant
species from genetic erosion through international conservation efforts: developing countries
would take charge of conservation of genetic material in their territories; and industrial countries
would meet the cost of conservation.
The International Undertaking originally subscribed to the rule of free exchange. Article 1: "This
Undertaking is based on the universally accepted principle that plant genetic resources are a
heritage of mankind and consequently should be available without restriction". 10
However, disagreement over the scope of intellectual property protection, and specifically over
whether breeder's lines and material protected by plant breeders' rights should be available without
9
10
Resolution 8/83 of the Twenty-second Session of the FAO Conference, Rome, 5-23 November 1983.
Article 5 of the Undertaking specifies that "[it] will be the policy of adhering Governments and institutions
having plant genetic resources under their control to allow access to samples of such resources, and to
permit their export, where the resources have been requested for the purposes of scientific research, plant
breeding or genetic resource conservation.