Bob Kreiken
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This chapter presents an insight into current negotiations of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) regarding the digitalization of genetic resources, from an ethics of technology perspective. The chapter gives an overview of the transition towards data-centric biological research and open science, and its implications for Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) policies, which consist of mechanisms that ensure fair access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable benefit-sharing from their utilization in research and development. Here, we examine value conflicts at the knowledge-governance interface, conceptualizing the CBD negotiations as a site that can be analyzed to provide a better understanding of the relationship between science, technology, and innovation policies, values, and distributive justice. In particular, we suggest that values regarding utilitarian notions of open science clash with sovereignty claims over so-called Digital Sequence Information (DSI) on genetic resources. We then apply a distributive justice lens to current debates about the modalities of a benefit-sharing system for DSI, illustrating how different normative approaches to distributive justice and criteria for the fair allocation of benefits underlie states’ and stakeholders’ political positions. The analysis concludes by discussing the need to consider the unequal scientific capabilities in the production of knowledge and calls for deeper reflection on value divergence in international Science, Technology, and Innovation policy-making processes.
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This chapter presents an insight into current negotiations of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) regarding the digitalization of genetic resources, from an ethics of technology perspective. The chapter gives an overview of the transition towards data-centric biological research and open science, and its implications for Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) policies, which consist of mechanisms that ensure fair access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable benefit-sharing from their utilization in research and development. Here, we examine value conflicts at the knowledge-governance interface, conceptualizing the CBD negotiations as a site that can be analyzed to provide a better understanding of the relationship between science, technology, and innovation policies, values, and distributive justice. In particular, we suggest that values regarding utilitarian notions of open science clash with sovereignty claims over so-called Digital Sequence Information (DSI) on genetic resources. We then apply a distributive justice lens to current debates about the modalities of a benefit-sharing system for DSI, illustrating how different normative approaches to distributive justice and criteria for the fair allocation of benefits underlie states’ and stakeholders’ political positions. The analysis concludes by discussing the need to consider the unequal scientific capabilities in the production of knowledge and calls for deeper reflection on value divergence in international Science, Technology, and Innovation policy-making processes.
To tackle the global biotechnological innovation divide, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are negotiating policies to fairly share the benefits from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources. The policies aim to transfer money, knowledge and technologies from technology-rich developed to biodiversity-rich developing countries in order to bolster the latter’s capacities to achieve the CBD’s objectives. However, by focusing predominantly on scientific capacities, these policies overlook the complex interactions between various actors, conditions and infrastructures that collectively constitute a country’s innovation capacity. In the first-time application of the National Innovation System approach in this policy context, we identify many factors contributing to an innovation gap in Colombia, the host country of COP16, resulting in barriers to study and valorize biodiversity and in lost opportunities for the country to benefit from new technologies. This analysis calls for consideration of broader policy reforms in access and benefit-sharing (ABS) negotiations, and illustrates how holistic policy interventions are needed in countries that benefit from ABS instruments to effectively use financial, scientific and technological resources. Without such an approach, efforts to enhance benefit-sharing from genetic resources and DSI risk reinforcing inequalities in innovation capacity. Finally, we discuss actions countries could take to use their current resources better, as well as how scientists and companies as users of genetic resources and DSI can pursue mutual interests by tackling innovation bottlenecks.
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To tackle the global biotechnological innovation divide, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are negotiating policies to fairly share the benefits from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources. The policies aim to transfer money, knowledge and technologies from technology-rich developed to biodiversity-rich developing countries in order to bolster the latter’s capacities to achieve the CBD’s objectives. However, by focusing predominantly on scientific capacities, these policies overlook the complex interactions between various actors, conditions and infrastructures that collectively constitute a country’s innovation capacity. In the first-time application of the National Innovation System approach in this policy context, we identify many factors contributing to an innovation gap in Colombia, the host country of COP16, resulting in barriers to study and valorize biodiversity and in lost opportunities for the country to benefit from new technologies. This analysis calls for consideration of broader policy reforms in access and benefit-sharing (ABS) negotiations, and illustrates how holistic policy interventions are needed in countries that benefit from ABS instruments to effectively use financial, scientific and technological resources. Without such an approach, efforts to enhance benefit-sharing from genetic resources and DSI risk reinforcing inequalities in innovation capacity. Finally, we discuss actions countries could take to use their current resources better, as well as how scientists and companies as users of genetic resources and DSI can pursue mutual interests by tackling innovation bottlenecks.
Disruptive data
How access and benefit-sharing discourses structured ideas and decisions during the Convention on Biological Diversity negotiations over digital sequence information from 2016 to 2022
In 2016, negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity on access and benefit-sharing policies were shaken up by the emergence of digital sequence information (DSI) as policy issue. Open access to DSI on genetic resources in genetic databases is standard practice in data-driven biological research, but such access was argued to bypass access and benefit-sharing policies of the Convention. As Parties and observers had to take a position on governing DSI, this research investigated the influence of discourses on the negotiations through argumentative discourse analysis. Actors in international environmental negotiations mobilize ‘background’ discourses – both consciously and unconsciously – to define and ‘foreground’ issues, which in turn shape negotiation and decision-making processes. The analysis shows that existing discourses on access and benefit-sharing and biodiversity structured actors’ statements aimed at defining DSI, thus applying and redefining access and benefit-sharing principles in the context of DSI. Actors with similar and slightly varying interests formed discourse-coalitions on the basis of shared storylines. Developing countries formed a separate discourse-coalition to push for DSI regulation wherein ideas about sustainable development and environmental justice were integrated, and to a lesser extent about biopiracy (the notion that open access to DSI enables the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge). In response, developed countries adopted narratives put forward by industry and research, advocating that open access to DSI is essential for science, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. A third coalition, consisting of Indigenous peoples and local communities and civil society, also mobilized environmental justice and biopiracy discourses, but more prominently a unique holistic discourse on nature. Finally, holistic and biopiracy discourses were marginalized in official negotiation documents, while scientific and sustainable development discourses were adopted in official negotiation documents. The research provides a novel understanding of the DSI-negotiations as discursive politics, and highlights how different positionalities in discourses structure and are structured by statements in this political arena.
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In 2016, negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity on access and benefit-sharing policies were shaken up by the emergence of digital sequence information (DSI) as policy issue. Open access to DSI on genetic resources in genetic databases is standard practice in data-driven biological research, but such access was argued to bypass access and benefit-sharing policies of the Convention. As Parties and observers had to take a position on governing DSI, this research investigated the influence of discourses on the negotiations through argumentative discourse analysis. Actors in international environmental negotiations mobilize ‘background’ discourses – both consciously and unconsciously – to define and ‘foreground’ issues, which in turn shape negotiation and decision-making processes. The analysis shows that existing discourses on access and benefit-sharing and biodiversity structured actors’ statements aimed at defining DSI, thus applying and redefining access and benefit-sharing principles in the context of DSI. Actors with similar and slightly varying interests formed discourse-coalitions on the basis of shared storylines. Developing countries formed a separate discourse-coalition to push for DSI regulation wherein ideas about sustainable development and environmental justice were integrated, and to a lesser extent about biopiracy (the notion that open access to DSI enables the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge). In response, developed countries adopted narratives put forward by industry and research, advocating that open access to DSI is essential for science, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. A third coalition, consisting of Indigenous peoples and local communities and civil society, also mobilized environmental justice and biopiracy discourses, but more prominently a unique holistic discourse on nature. Finally, holistic and biopiracy discourses were marginalized in official negotiation documents, while scientific and sustainable development discourses were adopted in official negotiation documents. The research provides a novel understanding of the DSI-negotiations as discursive politics, and highlights how different positionalities in discourses structure and are structured by statements in this political arena.
Terwijl de natuur in rap tempo verloren gaat, ontstaat tegelijkertijd een wildgroei aan data afkomstig uit de natuur. Die data worden als gemeengoed gezien waarvan iedereen, waaronder natuurbeschermers, profiteert. Er ontstaan echter nieuwe vormen van digitale uitsluiting door ongelijkheden in onderzoekscapaciteiten, databeheer en datanormen met negatieve gevolgen voor internationale wetenschappelijke samenwerking en natuurbehoud. Producenten en gebruikers van data moeten daarom veel meer doen om de digitalisering van de natuur in juiste banen te leiden.
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Terwijl de natuur in rap tempo verloren gaat, ontstaat tegelijkertijd een wildgroei aan data afkomstig uit de natuur. Die data worden als gemeengoed gezien waarvan iedereen, waaronder natuurbeschermers, profiteert. Er ontstaan echter nieuwe vormen van digitale uitsluiting door ongelijkheden in onderzoekscapaciteiten, databeheer en datanormen met negatieve gevolgen voor internationale wetenschappelijke samenwerking en natuurbehoud. Producenten en gebruikers van data moeten daarom veel meer doen om de digitalisering van de natuur in juiste banen te leiden.