The promise of access and benefit-sharing is met through holistic policy reform: Insights from Colombia’s genetic diversity and innovation landscape during COP16

Abstract

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.