www.jeremydebeer.ca

Genetic Resources (GRs) & Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS): Politics, Prospects and Opportunities for Canada Friday 11:30 - 13:00 in FTX 135. Biotechnology is one of the paradigmatic technologies of the new knowledge economy and genetic resources (GRs) are the fundamental building blocks or factor of production in biotechnology. By some accounts, over 70% of global biological or GRs are located in the indigenous and local communities of the global South and elsewhere whereas over 90% of the hi-tech innovations and capital for research and development aimed at their exploitation are in the global North. Thus, control and access to GRs is a site for North- South geo-political tensions, implicating the issue of equity in the global knowledge economy. This presentation will map the global landscape and constellating regime framework (including the environmental, intellectual property, human rights and indigenous knowledge regimes) for access and benefit sharing (ABS) and the underlying politics that has pitted users and providers of GRs (corresponding to developed countries of the North and their developing counterparts of the South) against one another. In locating Canada within that complex global ABS matrix, I argue that a critical appraisal of Canada's unique ecological profile and the recent attraction which marine GRs hold for biotechnology places Canada in a privileged position. As a leading biotechnology country, clearly, Canada is user of GRs. But I argue that Canada is also a real and potential provider. As a user and provider of GRs, Canada is in a position to make use of its status to a number of ends and opportunities. Perhaps more importantly, it can represent a credible voice of balance in the dichotomous global politics of ABS, one that recognizes that the status of users and providers of GRs is not mutually exclusive.