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Agrobiodiversity Under Different Property Regimes

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Abstract

Having an adequate and extensively recognized resource governance system is essential for the conservation and sustainable use of crop genetic resources in a highly populated planet. Despite the widely accepted importance of agrobiodiversity for future plant breeding and thus food security, there is still pervasive disagreement at the individual level on who should own genetic resources. The aim of the article is to provide conceptual clarification on the following concepts and their relation to agrobiodiversity stewardship: open access, commons, private property, state property and common heritage of humankind. After presenting each property regime, we will examine whether and how these incentivize the conservation, improvement and sharing of crop genetic resources, and conclude by defending a mixed property regime.

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Notes

  1. See International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plant (1991), art. 5.1.

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Acknowledgments

CT is funded by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and ZR is financed as part of the research program ‘New Technologies as Social Experiments’, which is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under grant number 016.114.625. Earlier versions and sections of this paper was presented October 2014 in Wessobrunn, December 2014 in Bogota and February 2015 in Mexico City, we would like to thank the participants of the seminars for their valuable comments. We are also grateful for valuable feedback provided by Georges Félix.

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  1. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Maestro Mario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, DF, Mexico

    Cristian Timmermann

  2. Department of Values, Technology and Innovation, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands

    Zoë Robaey

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  1. Cristian Timmermann
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  2. Zoë Robaey
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Correspondence to Cristian Timmermann.

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Timmermann, C., Robaey, Z. Agrobiodiversity Under Different Property Regimes. J Agric Environ Ethics 29, 285–303 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-016-9602-2

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