GenBenefit

You are International Development Officer at the University of Central Lancashire’s Centre for Professional Ethics in the UK. What kind of international work is the Centre involved in?

The Centre is relatively new. It was established in 1993 as a Centre of Excellence in applied philosophy, particularly in bioethics and environmental ethics. Our work in these areas is well recognised but we are also concentrating increasingly on policy aspects of research. We are striving to create a functional balance between conceptual and applied research in order to make our work more relevant to societal needs.

Is the GenBenefit project an example of this kind of work?  Can you tell me something more about it?

Yes, our work in Benefit Sharing is an example of this approach. The project deals with a basic ethics issue that has ramifications in policy areas such as Trade and Development. Moreover, it represents research that requires wide disciplinary input; our group, for instance, consists of ethisists, economists, laywers, social psychologists, gender specialists, etc. It is this interdisciplinarity that makes our work, we hope, more integrated and policy relevant.

So, what is Benefit Sharing and what are the main policy issues associated with it?

Our group has agreed on the following definition: "Benefit sharing is the action of giving a portion of advantages/profits derived from the use of resources to resource providers in order to achieve equity in exchange"

A typical, and for some controversial, case of benefit sharing is when a company/lab from industrialised countries makes use of the resources/knowledge of groups in developing countries to develop a new product. This usually happens in the health sector where the end products could provide health benefits for the general population, and also considerable profit for those involved in its production. In such cases, there are many issues at the local level that need clarification. These have to do with ownership of the original resource, the process by which that resource has been made available to the user, representation of the community in negotiations, types of benefits to be shared, the process of providing those benefits, etc.

These are all issues that require detailed research based on case studies, which is what we do in this project. Moreover, we are also particularly intersted in moving from cases that deal with non-human (mainly plant) resources to cases that involve human resources such as blood samples, DNA, tissue samples, etc.

At the same time, benefit sharing has become a key policy issue on the international stage, as we see in the negotiations at the World Trade Organisation. There, the issue of benefit sharing is a major barrier to concluding the TRIPS agreement.

This is very interesting and seems a rather complicated matter. How does your group go about researching it and providing policy advice?

We are trying to combine what one could call a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches to research. As I said before, we are concentrating on case studies around the world that involve local communities. We are going into the field and asking members of these communities their opinion on the issue. At the same time we are trying to communicate with the other stakeholders, e.g. companies, researchers, etc. to get a full picture of aspects of benefit sharing. This is not easy as it involves field trips to difficult places and interactions with communities that live in deprived environments and have very different worldviews.

Our top-down approach involves work with top policy makers in the area. For instance, we organised recently, in March, an international policy workshop in Delhi on benefit sharing. We gathered top negotiators from the Convention on Biological Diversity, World Trade Organisation, United Nations Environment Programme, etc. to discuss benefit sharing issues from their point of view. That has been a great experience, not only for our group but also for them, as they do not have often the chance to interact with researchers in the field and see the results of research that has, after all, direct relevance to their work.

So, what are the next steps for your group?

Our work is still ongoing. We are mid-way in our three year project and we have just concluded our field work and the first round of policy discussions. We will now go into a period of reflection to bring about a synthesis of these with policy relevance. Our main aim is to create an “ethics health check” for benefit sharing agreements which will function as a policy guideline for all those involved in the area. We would like to offer a road-map based on comprehensive research that will help in avoiding the many pitfalls that benefit sharing, particularly with developing countries, can create.

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