Access and Benefit Sharing: Balancing Conservation and Community Rights

Every time a pharmaceutical company develops a new drug from a rainforest plant, or a cosmetics brand markets a cream inspired by indigenous herbal practices, a fundamental question arises: who truly owns the knowledge and the resources behind that product? Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) is the global framework built to answer that question – and to ensure that communities and ecosystems that sustain biodiversity are not left out of the rewards. As climate change accelerates biodiversity loss and the commercial demand for genetic resources grows, understanding how ABS works – and where it falls short – has never been more important.

What is access and benefit sharing? 🔗

ABS refers to the policies and agreements that govern how genetic resources – the biological material found in plants, animals, and microorganisms – can be accessed, and how the benefits derived from their commercial or scientific use are returned to the countries and communities that stewarded them. The concept is rooted in the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which recognized for the first time that nations hold sovereignty over their biological heritage and that any benefits from its use must be equitably shared.

The CBD’s aspirations were given legal teeth through the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, adopted in Japan in 2010 and entered into force in 2014. The Protocol’s core aim is the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources, thereby contributing to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. As of 2025, it has been ratified by 142 parties, making it one of the most broadly adopted environmental treaties in the world.

In practice, ABS operates through three interlocking principles. Prior Informed Consent (PIC) requires that the country or community providing genetic resources must formally agree before access is granted. Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) are the negotiated conditions under which resources can be used. Benefit sharing itself covers both monetary returns – such as royalties and licensing fees – and non-monetary benefits like technology transfer, scientific training, and conservation funding. These benefits can come through innovation in sectors such as food, medicines, and cosmetics, or through restoration of ecosystems and endangered species, training, scientific exchange, or payment of fees and royalties.

Who are the key players? 🔗

The ABS system involves three broad groups. Provider countries, typically biodiverse nations in the Global South, hold the genetic resources. User countries and companies – research institutions, pharmaceutical firms, biotech companies, and cosmetics brands – access those resources for commercial or scientific development. And indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are often the custodians of the traditional knowledge that makes those resources scientifically valuable. Users of genetic resources include research institutes, universities, and private companies in sectors like pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, agriculture, horticulture, and biotechnology. Getting the balance of power right among these groups is where ABS agreements succeed or fail.

ABS in action: landmark case studies 🔗

The TBGRI-Kani model in Kerala, India 🔗

One of the earliest and most referenced ABS experiments in the world took place in the forests of the Western Ghats in Kerala, India. In 1987, scientists from the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) were led by members of the Kani tribe to a plant they called Arogyapacha (Trichopus zeylanicus), which they had long used as an energizing and immunity-boosting agent during forest treks. Scientists isolated 12 active compounds from Arogyapacha and developed a drug called Jeevani – a restorative, immune-enhancing, anti-stress and anti-fatigue agent.

What made this case globally significant was the benefit-sharing arrangement that followed. TBGRI agreed to share 50% of the licence fee and royalties with the Kani tribal community , channeled through a dedicated Kani Welfare Trust. This was widely celebrated as the world’s first formal model of ABS, directly inspired by India’s ratification of the CBD in 1994. A trust fund was established to channel monetary benefits into community development, including healthcare and education programs, while sustainable cultivation of Arogyapacha was encouraged to reduce pressure on wild populations.

However, deeper analysis of the model reveals real limitations. The model is placed in the specific context of the non-implementation of land rights laws in Kerala and the denial of rights to self-governance for Scheduled Tribes – issues the benefit-sharing arrangement did not address. Critics pointed out that the Kani community was fragmented across districts and not uniformly consulted; some Kani members only heard about the arrangement through newspaper reports. The monetary returns were also relatively modest. The case remains instructive not as a perfect model but as a sobering demonstration that financial benefit sharing, however well-intentioned, cannot substitute for the full recognition of indigenous land and governance rights.

The Hoodia case in South Africa 🔗

If the Kani case shows the potential of ABS, the Hoodia Gordonii case in southern Africa illustrates what happens when that potential is completely bypassed. The San people, one of the oldest human groups in Africa, had for generations used the Hoodia cactus plant from the Kalahari Desert to suppress hunger and thirst during long hunting journeys. This traditional knowledge was known to apartheid-era botanists who documented it – and it eventually became the basis for a commercial venture without the San’s knowledge or consent.

South Africa’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) isolated an appetite-suppressing molecule from Hoodia, which they named P57, patented the extraction process, and licensed it to UK pharmaceutical firm Phytopharm. Phytopharm then licensed it to Pfizer for US$21 million to develop an anti-obesity drug. Throughout this entire process, the San were not informed of the commercialization of their traditional knowledge, nor was their consent obtained. Phytopharm’s director famously claimed he believed the San people were extinct.

It was only in 2003, following sustained advocacy by indigenous rights organizations, that the CSIR entered into a formal ABS agreement with the South African San Council. The agreement established collective ownership by the San community of their traditional knowledge on Hoodia’s appetite-suppressing properties, providing the San with 6% of all royalties received by the CSIR from Phytopharm products, and 8% of milestone income when certain targets were achieved. While the signing ceremony in Andriesvale was hailed as a landmark moment, the real-world benefits remained elusive. Phytopharm eventually abandoned the commercial project, and the royalty stream dried up before the San communities received meaningful income. The case underscores how ABS agreements, even when finally secured, can be undermined by market failures and the unequal power dynamics between small indigenous communities and multinational corporations.

Challenges and conflicts in ABS 🔗

Ecological risks and resource overexploitation 🔗

A well-functioning ABS system should create economic incentives to conserve biodiversity – the thinking being that if communities and nations profit from their genetic resources, they will protect them. In practice, this logic can work in reverse. When a plant species is identified as commercially valuable, demand can outpace sustainable harvesting capacity. In the Hoodia case, before the pharmaceutical project collapsed, wild Hoodia populations were already being threatened by illegal harvesting to feed a global supplements market flooded with fake or unregulated products. Despite significant biodiversity concerns in South African ABS cases, there have been few actual conservation benefits.

Unequal representation and power imbalances 🔗

ABS negotiations are structurally skewed. Multinational corporations and research institutions have legal teams, negotiating experience, and long time horizons. Indigenous communities and even many national governments do not. ABS processes have favored groups that are politically connected, well organized, and resourced, while excluding more marginalized groups who are less capacitated. This means that even where agreements exist, the communities with the deepest relationship to the biological resource – and the most to lose from its misuse – often receive the smallest share of benefits.

Legal complexity and implementation gaps 🔗

A key challenge for users is that countries interpret and implement the CBD and the Nagoya Protocol in different ways. While some countries impose no obligations on users, others have stringent conditions. ABS legislation has many grey areas, which leaves users confused about when and how it may apply to them. This creates a paradox: overly complex or inconsistent national laws can actually discourage legitimate research and bioprospecting, reducing the incentive for companies to engage through proper ABS channels at all. The result can be informal access that bypasses benefit-sharing mechanisms entirely – what is often called biopiracy.

There is also the emerging issue of digital sequence information (DSI) – the genetic data derived from biological samples that can be stored and shared online. Once a genetic sequence is digitized and uploaded to an international database, it can be accessed and used commercially without ever physically moving the original biological material, making traditional ABS tracking mechanisms largely ineffective. A multilateral framework for DSI was established at COP 15 in 2022, decoupling access from benefit-sharing , but significant governance gaps remain.

The future of ABS: policy, community, and conservation 🔗

Stronger national implementation 🔗

The Nagoya Protocol provides the international scaffolding, but meaningful ABS outcomes depend on strong domestic legislation. The successful implementation of ABS at the national level has the potential to make considerable contributions to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. Countries with clear, accessible national ABS frameworks – including functioning competent national authorities, transparent permitting processes, and community consultation protocols – are far more likely to see benefits actually flow to local communities. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has invested over $72 million since 2003 to build the capacity of countries to implement ABS measures, leveraging more than $181 million across 108 countries.

Centering indigenous and local communities 🔗

Perhaps the most consistent lesson from ABS case studies is that agreements designed without meaningful community participation tend to fail – both for communities and for conservation. When indigenous and local communities are involved from the earliest stages of bioprospecting or research, as active partners rather than passive recipients, they are better positioned to negotiate terms that reflect the real value of their knowledge, to monitor compliance, and to direct benefit flows toward priorities that actually improve livelihoods. The San-Hoodia case itself concluded that obtaining prior informed consent from communities from the outset, and engaging communities early as active partners, is a crucial lesson – as is the importance of relationship building and having a policy climate conducive to fair deliberation.

Linking ABS to broader rights frameworks 🔗

Monetary benefits and royalties are meaningful but insufficient on their own. The TBGRI-Kani experience showed that benefit sharing without addressing land rights, forest access rights, and self-governance essentially gives a community a financial instrument without the institutional infrastructure to use it effectively. Future ABS frameworks need to be integrated with broader indigenous rights instruments – including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – to ensure that communities are not just compensated but genuinely empowered to manage their own biological resources on their own terms.

ABS and the post-2020 global biodiversity framework 🔗

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, set an ambitious target to protect 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030. ABS is a key financing mechanism within this agenda – with benefit flows from the use of genetic resources intended to fund conservation at scale. Realizing this potential requires not just more ABS agreements, but better ones: agreements that are faster to negotiate, more transparent in their terms, more equitable in their outcomes, and designed with communities rather than around them. Reconceptualizing ABS to leverage more equitable and sustainable outcomes is now recognized as essential to achieving genuine biodiversity goals, especially as new forms of digital biopiracy threaten to sidestep even the existing frameworks.

ABS is ultimately an expression of a simple but powerful principle: those who protect nature deserve a fair share of the value it generates. When it works well, it creates a virtuous cycle – communities benefit, conservation is funded, and the incentives to protect biodiversity align with economic realities. When it fails, it reproduces the very inequities that have historically driven the extraction of biological wealth from the Global South to the benefit of corporations in the North. The challenge is not with the principle, but with the political will and institutional capacity to make it real.

What do you think? If traditional knowledge is the foundation of a commercially successful drug or product, how should the value of that knowledge be calculated and fairly distributed to the community that held it for generations? And can ABS agreements ever be truly equitable when the communities negotiating them lack the same legal and financial resources as the corporations on the other side of the table?

References

1. https://www.cbd.int/abs/infokit/revised/web/factsheet-nagoya-en.pdf
2. https://www.cbd.int/abs/doc/protocol/nagoya-protocol-en.pdf
3. https://www.rebirth.co.za/san_tribe_and_biopiracy.htm
4. https://www.thegef.org/what-we-do/topics/biodiversity/access-and-benefit-sharing
5. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html
6. https://www.cbd.int/gbf