New Ocean Treaty Delays Gene-Sharing Payouts for Developing Nations
A landmark international agreement on marine genetic resources allows wealthy nations and biotech firms to continue profiting from ocean organisms without sharing benefits—deferring equity demands to a future review. The study reveals how negotiations shifted from fair-access principles to a complex technocratic scheme that preserves commercial advantage while postponing developing countries' claims.
Originaltitel: Ocean justice? Marine genetic resources and monetary benefit-sharing under the BBNJ Agreement
The adoption of the BBNJ Agreement concluded a decades-long dispute over how MGRs of ABNJ should be legally classified and how benefits, particularly monetary benefits, derived from the utilisation and commercialisation of these MGRs, should be shared. The outcome represented a legally creative compromise bridging the opposing positions of the Global North and South on these issues. This article argues that the BBNJ regime should be understood less as a final resolution of distributive conflict and more as a reconfiguration of ocean justice through the deferral of equity claims. By analysing relevant provisions of the Agreement through the lenses of distributive, procedural and corrective justice, the article shows how negotiations shifted from doctrinal disagreements over the applicability of the CHM and the FHS, to a technocratic focus on monetary benefit-sharing mechanisms. The resulting decoupled model, which combines open access, state-funded contributions with a review clause for the operationalisation of possible future monetary obligations, essentially preserves unrestricted commercial appropriation of these MGRs, while postponing the equitable sharing of resultant monetary benefits. Coupled with temporal exceptions and high activation thresholds, this is likely to entrench existing technical and scientific asymmetries between states. The article demonstrates that the Agreement does not merely balance the competing principles of the CHM and the FHS but restructures the terms on which justice claims can be articulated in the ocean commons. By allowing free appropriation of these MGRs while rendering monetary benefit-sharing contingent on future decision-making processes, the Agreement risks solidifying, rather than transforming, structural inequalities.