The Convention on Biological Diversity: IP, Access and Benefit-Sharing, and New Technologies for Sustainable Development
Working Paper, Publication Forthcoming
(August 2026)
By Chidi Oguamanam
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is neither an Indigenous knowledge nor an intellectual property instrument. Yet for over thirty years of its existence, the CBD has influenced global conversation and promotion of Indigenous knowledge systems and its fraught intersection with intellectual property in the context of converging knowledge production, technology transfer and innovations in the life sciences and, specifically, genetic resources.
In this paper, through critical textual analysis of the relevant Articles of the CBD, its supplementary Nagoya Protocol and its work program on access and benefit sharing (ABS), I explore the intersection of intellectual property, Indigenous knowledge of IPLCs as sites of tension between the CBD and the TRIPS Agreement, given the latter's non-recognition of Indigenous knowledge. The analysis maps the technological transition from physical genetic resources to their digital rendition as a context for the transformation of the ABS discourse in an emergent regime context recently amplified by the work of the WIPO, notably through the Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (GRATK) Treaty as well as the CBD's new multilateral mechanism for ABS over digital sequence information under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). The inquiry examines the ramifications of these complex transformations for the cardinal objectives of the CBD and the advancement of sustainable development.
