ABSTRACT
All plant breeding depends on access to crop diversity. Climate-change threats to crop production further increase the need for access to crop diversity through multilateral or open, flexible, bilateral access and benefit-sharing (ABS) systems. With the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the ‘common heritage of humankind’ regime for genetic resources was replaced by national sovereignty and bilateral ABS contracts. From 2004, the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Plant Treaty) established a system of multilateral, ‘facilitated access’ and benefit-sharing for 64 major crop plants; later, the Nagoya Protocol strengthened the bilateral approach to ABS originally created under the CBD. Many countries have made their UPOV-compliant plant variety protection laws increasingly restrictive, narrowing down historical principles of ‘breeders exemption’ and ‘farmers privilege’. We argue that the CBD/Nagoya Protocol and patent/contract systems represent a tightening of the ‘straitjacket’ on plant breeding, hampering rather than promoting access and breeding. The internationally coordinated response to global rust epidemics has shown how facilitated access is vital to achieving benefit-sharing in the form of improved farmer access to new, resistant varieties. This chapter discusses options for opening access – patent pools, the European Union research exception for breeding, modifying the UPOV Convention to provide short lag-periods for pre-breeding, the Open Source Seed Initiative, and the process for enhancing functioning of the Plant Treaty’s multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing.
