ABS, Reconciliation and Opportunity

In Genetic Resources, Justice and Reconciliation: Canada and Global Access and Benefit Sharing
Chidi Oguamanam, ed.
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 252-266

Contrary to conventional assumptions, ABS is not an issue for developing countries alone; it besets developed and developing countries alike. Neither is it a subject that is easily limited to the simplistic binary of provider and user country; or of Indigen- ous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems; of biodiversity-rich and genetic resource barren countries. ABS is a strategy that harmonizes the complementary strengths of every strand in the process of knowledge production, for example the ‘scientific’ and traditional/Indigenous knowledge; the local and the global, etc. Every country is a stakeholder in ensuring that the process of accessing genetic resources and various knowledge systems associated thereto are adequately inte- grated into the complex contexts for the evolution of knowledge and its scaling up for a just and equitable benefit sharing system.

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