Sirakaya Aysegul, De Brucker Klaas, Vanagt Thomas
Faculty of Law, Department of European, Public and International Law, UGent - Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
ABSint - Access and Benefit-Sharing International, Bruges, Belgium.
Front Genet. 2020 Dec 3;11:549836. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.549836. eCollection 2020.
In this paper we conduct a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) from a multiple stakeholder point of view for the design of access and benefit sharing (ABS) agreements concerning genetic resources, in particular regarding the access component of such agreements. We start by analyzing the objectives defined by international law (viz. the Convention on Biodiversity and the Nagoya Protocol) that every party (i.e., all United Nations member states, except the United States) must strive to attain when developing national legislation on ABS. As countries have a certain degree of freedom concerning the way and the extent to which they need to integrate these objectives into their national frameworks and since stakeholders attach different levels of importance to these objectives, such an MCA will help identify those options that command the highest value added from the community of stakeholders. Consequently, those options are expected to hold the highest potential for successful implementation. The MCA performed in this paper is based on Saaty's analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and starts from the objectives (i.e., criteria) enshrined in international law, and then proceeds by assessing the relative importance of these criteria from the point of view of four different stakeholder groups (industrial users, academic users, collections and provider countries). The alternatives to be evaluated in the MCA are based upon options discussed qualitatively in our previous study published in (2019b). These options are now transformed into "design parameters" and are evaluated in terms of their contribution to stakeholder criteria. This evaluation is now performed in a quantitative way using MCA and is based on previous qualitative discussions with stakeholders that have been reported qualitatively in our previous paper in referred to above. The final result of our MCA consists of pointing out which design parameters regarding access obtain the highest priority from the community of stakeholders and hence need to be present in national regulatory frameworks on ABS that will be implemented by member states. It is our intention to undertake similar research for the Benefit Sharing component of ABS agreements in the future.
在本文中，我们从多个利益相关者的角度进行多标准分析（MCA），以设计关于遗传资源的获取与惠益分享（ABS）协议，特别是此类协议的获取部分。我们首先分析国际法（即《生物多样性公约》和《名古屋议定书》）所界定的目标，每个缔约方（即除美国外的所有联合国会员国）在制定关于ABS的国家立法时都必须努力实现这些目标。由于各国在将这些目标纳入其国家框架的方式和程度上有一定的自由度，而且利益相关者对这些目标的重视程度各不相同，这样的多标准分析将有助于确定那些从利益相关者群体中获得最高附加值的选项。因此，预计这些选项具有最高的成功实施潜力。本文所进行的多标准分析基于萨蒂的层次分析法（AHP），从国际法所规定的目标（即标准）出发，然后从四个不同的利益相关者群体（工业用户、学术用户、收藏机构和提供国）的角度评估这些标准的相对重要性。多标准分析中要评估的备选方案基于我们在2019年发表的上一项研究中定性讨论的选项。这些选项现在被转化为“设计参数”，并根据它们对利益相关者标准的贡献进行评估。现在使用多标准分析以定量方式进行这种评估，并且基于我们在上述上一篇论文中定性报告的与利益相关者的先前定性讨论。我们多标准分析的最终结果是指出哪些关于获取的设计参数从利益相关者群体中获得最高优先级，因此需要纳入会员国将实施的关于ABS的国家监管框架中。我们打算未来对ABS协议的惠益分享部分进行类似的研究。
