The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture - Implications for Developing Countries and Interdependence with International Biodiversity and Intellectual Property Law

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) creates the first multilateral system of access and benefit sharing at the international level. This system allows states and private actors to gain access to a large pool of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) in exchange for granting access to their own resources. The ITPGRFA aims to allocate part of the commercial benefits generated by products that make use of genetic resources to those who have contributed to the conservation and development of genetic resources. In this way, the ITPGRFA creates an incentive to continue conservation and development and aims at benefiting farmers, especially in developing countries. The ITPGRFA attempts to alleviate the burden of implementing conservation measures by requiring developed nations to provide developing nations with technical and financial assistance. The ITPGRFA fills a gap in existing international conservation law that was left by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): the CBD was targeted at all biodiversity, which limited its usefulness for dealing with PGRFA.