ABSTRACT
The foregoing analyses expanded on the limitations of current regulatory regimes such as patents and PBRs systems as well as some national and regional biodiversity regulatory instruments to address the concerns of local and indigenous communities over the scientific and commercial exploitation of their assets. Furthermore, discussions in the previous chapters covered community rights broadly from a human-rights angle and recurrently observed that, community rights have not benefited from the proper consideration that they deserve neither in the biodiversity policy instruments governing access to genetic resources and TK nor in the IP instruments governing exploitation of the outputs of scientific research based on community assets. This chapter presents in general terms the regulatory approaches which, if adopted and implemented by countries rich in bio-cultural assets at the national level, will go a long way to addressing the concerns of rural communities from a human-rights perspective. It does so by proposing the way human-rights principles should penetrate the IP-based biodiversity policy and regulatory tools on access to and exploitation of community assets. The human-rights principles discussed herein are rooted on the international framework of human-rights instruments with specific emphasis on its coverage of local communities and indigenous peoples’ rights. The subsequent chapter (Chapter 8) will address in specific contexts the implementation of the policy and regulatory approaches discussed here.
