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Hope you can join us for the second lecture in this series. Wynberg and Laird have been producing definitional work in the area for decades. This will be a fascinating opportunity to see what they think is next. Should be of value to anyone with research interests in law, biodiversity, bioeconomy, indiginous knowledge, human rights, environmental humanities, ethnobiology, history and philosophy of science, and development. If you can't join us live, you can register to receive a notification when the recording is ready.

Upcoming People, Plants and the Law lecture Having trouble viewing this email? View Online

[image: Rachel and Sarah] Rachel Wynberg (University of Cape Town) and Dr. Sarah Laird (University of Kent), Rethinking biodiversity-based economies for justice and conservation

Access and benefit sharing (ABS) is a policy approach that links access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge to the sharing of monetary and non-monetary benefits. It first found expression in the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), but is also part of the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework (PIP), and the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It spans a wide range of sectors and issues, including equity in scientific research, conservation of biodiversity, and support for traditional knowledge and Indigenous and local stewards of biodiversity.

Multiple laws and policies are now in place across the world to implement ABS. While this might signal progress, questions remain about their efficacy. Typically, these laws and associated benefit-sharing agreements serve as legal compliance mechanisms that justify a ‘business as usual’ approach without fundamentally changing power relations or economic disparities. Moreover, while science and technology have transformed dramatically over the lifetime of ABS, including an exponential increase in the use of genetic sequence data – or digital sequence information (DSI) - ABS approaches have remained largely static and have narrowed to a transactional effort to channel financial benefits, with few addressing the relationship between benefit sharing, social justice, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity conservation. Rather than enhance scientific collaboration and capacity building, such policy efforts have often had a restrictive effect.

Despite a substantial investment of funding, capacity and resources, and a plethora of laws and studies, ABS has met with surprisingly little analysis as an approach to promote equity in science, remedy past and current injustices, and conserve biodiversity. It also remains fixed in pro-growth strategies to achieve conservation and development that are now well recognised to have failed. Our presentation aims to take a step back, and to think anew about models of development that underpin ABS and more transformative approaches to achieve justice and conservation in biodiversity-based economies. We will address the limitations of “benefit sharing” that does not include paying attention to power imbalances and inequities - and ask how we can think in more innovative ways about paradigms that de-emphasize scale and global markets, measure impact differently, and enable long-overdue recognition for other ways of knowing and being. We believe there is a great deal that has been learned over the years on ABS, biotrade and non-timber forest products, equitable research partnerships and commercialization, conservation and in other areas. But moving forward, laws must be more strategic, and they must accommodate vastly complex social, cultural, economic, and ecological conditions, as well as a dramatically changing world – in science and technology, business, severely threatened biodiversity, and in culture and society.

Date: Tuesday 12 November 2024 Time: 5-6pm AEST / 6-7pm AEDT / Time in your location

Venue: Zoom

If you can't join us live, please register to receive a notification when the recording is available. Register here

Rachel Wynberg is a Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town in South Africa where she holds a government-funded Research Chair focused on Environmental and Social Dimensions of the Bio-economy. With a background in both the natural and social sciences, she has a strong interest in inter- and trans disciplinarity and policy engagement across the humanities, arts and sciences. Her research spans topics relating to just, ethical and biodiverse bio-economies; seeds, farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity; knowledge politics; agroecology and food sovereignty; the governance of wild species; and emerging technologies and equity in science.

Dr. Sarah A. Laird is a forester and ethnobiologist by training. Her interests cover a range of inter-related issues, including forest-based traditional knowledge and livelihoods, biodiversity policy, emerging technologies, and the ethical and conservation dimensions of the commercial use of biodiversity. Since the 1990s, Sarah has collaborated with communities around Mt Cameroon on ethnobiological research and knowledge exchange programs to support and conserve threatened traditional management practices and cultural forests. Her current policy work includes that on the ethical and conservation implications of transformative scientific and technological advances, particularly within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Rachel Wynberg and Sarah Laird presently co-direct a process of "rethinking" the relationship between conservation and equity, and the biodiversity-based economy, including access and benefit-sharing. https://rethinking-abs.org/

About the People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series

The People, Plants, and the Law online lecture series

explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.

Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.

This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Berris Charnley . This lecture series is a partnership between The University of Queensland, The ARC Laureate Project Harnessing Intellectual Property to Build Food Security, The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature & Agriculture, and The ARC Uniquely Australian Foods Training Centre.

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www.plantsuccess.org/people-plants-and-the-law/

The organisers of the People Plants and the Law lecture series acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past, present and emerging.

You received this email because you have attended a People Plants and the Law lecture in the past, or because a member of our research group listed you as potentially interested in these lectures. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please use the link below. This will not unsubscribe you from other Plant Success communications.

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