Hohoe, (V/R) July 16, GNA - A Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, has observed that the new global agreement intended to protect the biodiversity of developing nations from unfair exploitation could do more harm than good.
Professor Krystyna Swiderska, who outlined this in an article made available to the Ghana News Agency, referred to a new international law or protocol that 193 governments are party to.
She said the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, which would take place in Nagoya, Japan, in October are likely to adopt the agreement.
She said the protocol is meant to control access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge and ensure that the benefits that accrue are shared fairly.
With the final negotiating session before the October meeting in Japan, underway, this week, in Montreal, Canada, Prof Swiderska said the deal could assist to reverse the loss of biodiversity but warned that the negotiators would fail to ensure a positive outcome unless they resolve a number of critical issues.
She said for instance the industrialised countries do not want the protocol to cover traditional knowledge that is already in the public domain.
"This would enable companies to freely access this knowledge without the need for consent or sharing of benefits that would arise from its use," she added.
Prof Swiderska said: "Industrialised countries are placing the interest of private companies ahead of the interests of the global public good."
"What's more, a number of countries do not want to recognise the customary rights of indigenous and local communities over genetic resources, despite their recognition under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and their importance for community subsistence."
Prof Swiderska hinted that biodiversity is central to human wellbeing, more so, when communities around the world have nurtured the variety of life including thousands of crops and medicinal plants that are vital for agriculture, food security, health and nutrition.
She indicated these resources take on new importance today because they provide options that would enable people to adapt to climate change by switching to flood or drought resistant crop varieties.
Prof Swiderska said private sector and consumers worldwide have benefited greatly from these riches with some corporations increasingly seeking biological resources and associated local knowledge and using them to develop patent and sell new medicines, seeds, foodstuffs and industrial products to avoid "biopiracy".
