Common pools of genetic resources

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gerd Winter
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: from 2009 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 158005230

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) devises access to genetic resources as a bilateral exchange between the provider and user state. This arrangement is largely inefficient and distributionally unjust. The submitted research project looks for solutions which are both more efficient and more equitable. The solution tested is common pools of genetic material and of genetic information. They have the potential of facilitating access, monitoring uses, collecting benefit shares and forwarding them to all source countries. The project will explore the structures, functioning and legal instruments of existing common pools including networks of in situ genetic material, collections and networks of ex situ resources, data banks and meta-databanks of genetic information, and networks and collections of traditional knowledge. The empirical and legal analysis strives to produce an improved typology of common pools and explain why or why not pools emerge. It will be attempted to develop a legal model for common pools, in particular one for genetic information bases and metabases, and one for regional pools of in situ and ex situ genetic resources, which may be linked with the multilateral system of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants