ABSTRACT
ABS has been discussed mainly from a legal or political perspective. The aim of the present book is to contribute to the international debate by seeking to shed light on the approach by adopting an economic point of view. The ABS concept has been developed as an instrument to stop, inter alia, the decline of biodiversity. To analyze ABS from an economic point of view and assess its effectiveness, it is necessary to step back and place biodiversity loss in an economic framework. This chapter starts out by exploring the economic issues bound up with biodiversity loss. The relevant economic issues are valuation, economic development and poverty, market and policy/institutional failure. The first section describes the problems faced by and the results of attempts to come up with economic valuations of biodiversity. A number of different studies have been undertaken to assess the pharmaceutical value of biodiversity; only a small number seek to assess the agricultural values of genetic resources. However, these studies come to the conclusion that there are in fact certain economic values for genetic resources. The section furthermore explores the links between biodiversity conservation, ABS, and poverty. ABS is an instrument that has the potential to contribute to poverty alleviation. Finally, the section identifies market and policy/institutional failure as a factor responsible for the loss of biodiversity. Investigating the promise of ABS to contribute to biodiversity conservation and economic development, the second section outlines the economic framework of the ABS concept. It evaluates the ABS approach to biodiversity conservation by means of commercialization and deals with how IPRs play in ABS.
