Fair Access or Mirage? A Biodiscovery Case Study at Uluru for Indigenous Benefit-sharing
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
International minimum standards for sharing and protecting Indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge have been adopted under United Nations conventions which promote fair and equitable benefit-sharing with Indigenous peoples. However, biodiscovery continues in Australia using Indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge without adequately recognising their rights and interests despite Australia having signed the Nagoya Protocol. In this paper, we use legal doctrinal research combined with qualitative analysis and a case study to demonstrate inconsistencies of Australian Commonwealth regulation with the Nagoya Protocol for accessing genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge from Commonwealth areas and benefit-sharing with Indigenous communities (Collings 2024). We use an example of biodiscovery at Uluru which is a sacred site where Australian native tobacco species were collected under permit to demonstrate the shortcomings of Australia’s Commonwealth access and benefit-sharing regulation. We conclude that regulatory arrangements in Australia for collecting and using biological resources and associated traditional knowledge from Commonwealth areas are inconsistent with international standards and often unenforceable to protect traditional knowledge and provide fair and reasonable benefit-sharing with Australia’s Indigenous peoples.
Article Details
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who submit articles to this journal from 31st March 2014 for publication, agree to the following terms:
a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Open Access Citation Advantage Service). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (ie. a copy of a work which has been published in a UTS ePRESS journal, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the UTS ePRESS publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.
d) Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.
For Volume 5 No 3 (2013) and before, the following copyright applied:
Authors submitting articles to UTSePress publications agree to assign a limited license to UTSePress if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication. This license allows UTSePress to publish a manuscript in a given issue. Articles published by UTSePress are protected by copyright which is retained by the authors who assert their moral rights. Authors control translation and reproduction rights to their works published by UTSePress. UTSePress publications are copyright and all rights are reserved worldwide. Downloads of specific portions of them are permitted for personal use only, not for commercial use or resale. Permissions to reprint or use any materials should be directed to UTSePress.