Synthesis

Access to seeds for farmers (like access to land or to water) is an essential component for reaching food security and sustainable agriculture. However, there are several impediments to such access, including erosion of agrobiodiversity, legal and technological means enclosing PGRFA, or political hurdles.

These impediments are amplified by risks and hazards resulting from climate change. These are immediate challenges, which Humanity has to address now in the collective interest.

The present book attempted to unravel some of the questions and difficulties related to these challenges by analysing in detail the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which aims at conserving, sustainably using and facilitating access to PGRFA. Using an inductive research approach, where several disciplines, theories, concepts and methods are mixed, a thorough legal analysis of the Treaty was carried out and complemented by a more sociological stakeholders’ analysis. This mixed method allowed to capture a 360° view of the political situation and to understand the issues at stake in the international setting regulating access to seeds.

The research results showed that, although the Treaty and its instruments (Multilateral System of access and benefit-sharing (MLS), Third Party Beneficiary (3PB), Benefit-sharing Fund (BSF), etc.) are very innovative from an international law perspective, their implementation revealed major dysfunctions. Their examination enabled to spot eight important conceptual constraints in the Treaty’s structure, which hinder contracting parties in reaching the set objectives. The theory of the commons has been identified as a useful theoretical framework to address these constraints. Six commons’ invariable principles were set forward to mitigate these constraints and eight recommendations were formulated in an attempt to improve the Treaty at the conceptual level.

Table 7.1 below provides a summary of the conceptual constraints and recommendations.

By transforming the current intergovernmental multilateral legal instrument into an effective and collectively constructed political Global Seed Commons, the overall objective of this work is to contribute to designing an alternative path to the current seed regulatory and legal setting entangled in an out-of-date public/

Table 7.1 Summary table of recommendations

Treaty topics		Conceptual constraints	Recommendations
1	Sustainable agriculture & food security	Overall goals of Treaty are not reached inter alia because they are not recognized as direct objectives	Formally recognize food security and sustainable agriculture as direct objectives of the Treaty
2	Scope	Difference between the scope of the Treaty and the scope of the MLS, leading to dysfunction	Harmonize the scope of the MLS with that of the Treaty to include all PGRFA Expand the Treaty boundaries to make it truly global
3	Farmers’ Rights	The role of farmers in PGRFA management and their associated rights are not recognized at the international level in the same terms as IPRs	Formally recognize Farmers’ Rights at the international law level Commit to implementing these rights at the national level
4	Facilitated access	Facilitated access is absent for the ultimate beneficiaries i.e. farmers	Recognize a direct facilitated access to PGRFA for farmers Promote sui generis PVP systems to recreate an effective farmers’ exemption Adapt existing regulations on seed certification and commercialization
5	Benefitsharing/ Benefitsharing Fund	Farmers are considered as passive beneficiaries denying their de facto active role as main stakeholders in the food production chain Benefit-sharing is taking place in a very limited way	Reposition farmers as active stakeholders in the Treaty, MLS and BSF management Increase size of BS Fund Benefits of the Treaty should reach all beneficiaries
6	Information/ knowledge	Appropriation, Protection Availability mainly of one type of information of interest to breeders	Develop the GLIS keeping in mind the overall goals of the Treaty and the needs of smallholder farmers Seek means to turn the MLS into a space where traditional knowledge would be protected from misappropriation
7	Third Party Beneficiary	Preservation of MLS rights, but not of all stakeholders’ rights. Lack of system to balance powers	Advertise the 3PB’s role to the Treaty community and to the public to increase its efficiency and use Deal with 3PB cases in a more transparent way Expand 3PB’s mandate to compliance
8	Participation/ governance	Governance of MLS remains at state level Lack of inclusion of all stakeholders at all levels Problem of trust	Allow all stakeholders to effectively participate in the global seed commons governance

private good dichotomy appropriation scheme. One cross-cutting aspect that appears all along the analysis is the lack of recognition of the role and rights of smallholder farmers. Recognition of Farmers’ Rights — as a collective right of groups - at the international level would be an essential step to overcome the imbalance of rights pertaining to seeds and to reach the food security and sustainable agriculture overall goals of the Treaty.

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Source: Frison Christine. Redesigning the Global Seed Commons: Law and Policy for Agrobiodiversity and Food Security. Routledge,2019. — 294 p.. 2019

Synthesis

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