Marine Genetic Resources: a Practical Legal Approach to Stimulate Research, Conservation and Benefit Sharing

In September 2018, the negotiation of a new international legally binding instrument (ILBI) for the Area Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) took the first really concrete steps under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS1).2 Prior to the General Assembly establishing this Intergovernmental Committee there have been meetings in a Preparatory Committee and Ad Hoc Working group, dating back more than a decade.3 The second meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee spent, at its meeting in March–April 2019, two and a half days discussing the role of marine genetic resources (MGR). In the working document ‘Chair’s streamlined non-paper on elements of a draft text of an international legally-binding instrument’ that might be the first textual step towards what might be a protocol to UNCLOS, MGR are allocated six pages drawing on experiences of other regulations of genetic resources.4 There are a number of special regulatory and factual features for marine genetic resources that cannot be copy-pasted from any of the existing regimes