The twentieth century was marked by worldwide genetic resource erosion, in reaction to which the international community (in particular countries from the North) developed large ex situ conservation policies.

These policies culminated with the creation of significant national and international genebanks and research centres (such as those of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research - CGIAR), as observed in Chapter 2 of the present book.

At that time (between 1900 and 1970/80s), the state and public institutions were urged to take action to conserve biodiversity by scientists that were alarmed by the state of biodiversity loss worldwide. Since the 1960s and mostly from the 1990s onwards, another actor was perceived to be the most apt to regulate biodiversity management: the market. The science (modern breeding and biotechnology) and the law (IPRs and international trade laws) were used as enabling tools for the market to dominate biodiversity management. While some actors - mainly FAO, Bioversity International and the CGIAR - advocated the need to conserve genetic diversity in trust for the benefit of humanity,¹ the general commodification of genetic resources trend was already well settled, and all the international agreements adopted to protect biodiversity were entangled within these market beliefs (see chapters 2 and 3). Indeed, the Convention on Biological Diversity formalized the objectification of biodiversity as mere economic resources, the use of which could generate benefits, but also consecrated the market as the most appropriate regulating instrument for reaching biodiversity conservation and sustainable use objectives.

While in the 1980s, the FAO Commission on Plant Genetic Resources had attempted to establish an ‘in trust for humanity’ status for the most important plants feeding the world,² the negotiations of the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources soon turned out to a non-legally binding instrument, unable to counterbalance the general appropriation of biodiversity trend.

The idea that seeds should be governed differently through an international legally binding instrument, and most of all collectively, germinated in some minds (Cooper et al., 1994). As a reaction to the commodification scheme and to resolve the important tensions explained in Chapter 3 of the present work, the Multilateral System of access and benefit-sharing of the Plant Treaty was developed, thereby definitely recognizing the special status of the most important plants feeding the world (Falcon and Fowler, 2002). Since then, the MLS is considered to function as a Global Commons (Halewood et al., 2013; Dedeurwaerdere, 2013; Halewood, 2013), thereby implicitly endorsing a collective governance policy for PGRFA. Yet, Chapters 4 and 5 of the present book demonstrate that, because of the hyperownership views that has dominated the negotiation of the Treaty, as of 2016, the Treaty implementation process is entangled in significant problems. These constraints clearly show that many contracting parties have difficulties implementing the Treaty and that specific stakeholders’ voices and needs (i.e. farmers) are neither heard nor met.

The hypothesis underlying the present chapter postulates that picturing the MLS as a ‘true’ global commons, with intrinsic consequences on its governance, may contribute to a more efficient implementation of the Treaty and to better reaching the Treaty’s overall goals of food security and sustainable agriculture, similarly as what authors have postulated for governance mechanisms of microbial resources (Dedeurwaerdere et al., 2009; Halewood, 2010). Hence, considering seeds as common goods constitutes an alternative way to overcome the problematic dichotomy that appeared above in the Treaty analysis between seeds defined exclusively as private goods and seeds characterized as public goods. According to Ostrom (1990), common-pool resources institutions are an answer to manage resources in a sustainable manner, to avoid depletion and to allow communities to live perpetually from a resource (fishing; irrigation, etc.).

Local and collective self-organization by community users is seen as a third and often overlooked possibility for effectively managing a resource sustainably, compared to market regulation or state intervention (Ostrom et al., 2007).

Considering this hypothesis, there are many questions that arise in order to build further the last step of the inductive research carried out in the present work: how would the concept of commons better allow for reaching the Treaty’s direct objectives and overall goals? Can the current review process of the Treaty resolve all the PGRFA management constraints listed at the end of Chapter 6? Can one instrument answer all the different needs and expectations of all the different stakeholders? Would the theory of the commons enable the Treaty to address the central issue of heterogeneity of resources (landraces/breeding lines/genomic resources), heterogeneity of stakeholders (small farmers/breed- ers/Big Five/consumers/ funders), heterogeneity of uses (self-consumption/ local market/global trade market/speculation and financing-investment) and heterogeneity of contexts (various development perspectives) (Batur, 2014; Batur and Dedeurwaerdere, 2014)? How could ‘the law’ and its necessary transformation solve the identified issues? Would the commons theory allow the Treaty to intrinsically respect the interdependence criterion, which is fundamental for the seed governing system to realize the necessary balance, equilibrium and resilience between the above-mentioned aspects? These are the questions to be explored when relating the research results of the legal and stakeholders’ analysis to the theoretical framework of the commons.

This final chapter is divided into four sections, two of which have already been published in a previous book³ (Girard and Frison, 2018a). First, I briefly

Inspiring an effective Plant Treaty 169 explain the theory of the commons, from Hardin to Ostrom including the ‘new vogue’ with Mattei, Dardot and Laval, as well as others. Second, I show how this theory is a pertinent theoretical framework in resolving the Treaty’s dysfunction. Third, I do this by focusing on six invariable principles pertinent both for the Treaty and the theory of the commons. Finally, I analyse the eight identified Treaty topics in light of the theory of the commons and explore how a deeper ‘commonization’ might contribute to enhance the Treaty’s implementation. This final section aims at transforming the current MLS into a ‘real global seed commons’, by making normative proposals for possible solutions to boost reaching the Treaty’s objectives.

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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

The twentieth century was marked by worldwide genetic resource erosion, in reaction to which the international community (in particular countries from the North) developed large ex situ conservation policies.

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