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appropriate, effective and proportionate legislative and other measures to ensure that genetic resources (including their derivatives) utilized within its jurisdiction have been accessed in accordance with PIC and that ‘mutually agreed terms have been established as required by the domestic ABS legislation or regulatory requirements of the other Party’. A range of different types of benefits are described in Annex I of the Nagoya Protocol. These include monetary benefits (such as access/sample fees, milestone payments, the payment of royalties and licence fees in the case of commercialisation, research funding, joint ownership of intellectual property rights) and non-monetary benefits (such as the sharing of research and development results, collaboration, cooperation and contribution in scientific research and product development, capacity strengthening for technology transfer, training and directed research). In this connection it is important to note that the Nagoya Protocol effectively sets up a mechanism for bilateral benefit sharing rather than the multilateral benefit sharing mechanisms contained in other instruments such as the FAO-sponsored International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) and the benefit sharing provisions on deep sea bed mineral resources provided for in Part XI of UNCLOS and the Part XI Agreement. Although, as mentioned above, the Nagoya Protocol has yet to enter into force its imminent ratification by the EU and Member States means is anticipated that this will happen sometime during the course of 2014. In order to be permit the EU and Member States to be able to ratify and implement the Nagoya Protocol the ABS Regulation’) was Recently adopted by the Euroepan Parliament and by the Council279. The key obligation contained in the ABS Regulation is in article 4 which imposes a duty on users (defined as a natural or legal person using genetic resource…’) to exercise due diligence to ascertain that genetic resources were accessed in accordance with applicable ABS legislation or regulatory requirements and that, where relevant, benefits are fairly and equitably shared upon mutually agreed terms. Moreover users must take active steps as regards acquiring and sharing information on the resources and the Member States must monitor user compliance to ensure the correct application of article 4. The ABS Regulation only applies to genetic resources over which states exercise sovereign rights and to traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources that are accessed after the entry into force of the Nagoya Protocol. In other words it will not apply to resources already contained in collections or gene banks at that date and nor will it apply to marine genetic resources obtained from ABNJ. Before evaluating in more detail the nature of benefit sharing in the context of Blue Biotechnology, it is first necessary to briefly examine the nature of kinds of benefit that may be derived from marine genetic resources: after all with the exception of harvested products such as algae, the value of such resources derives from the knowledge or information that they provide. As noted above, the Nagoya Protocol lists a number of different types of monetary and nonmonetary benefits. While the sharing of non-monetary benefits (such as research and development results, capacity strengthening for technology transfer, training and directed research etc.) are relatively easy to understand at the conceptual level (even if in practice the sharing element may remain difficult to practically implement) a more important question is how economic benefits are to be derived from what are often very small quantities of marine genetic resources. The simple answer is that the economic value of such resources derives from the knowledge or information that 279 Regulation (EU) No 511/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on compliance measures for users from the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization in the Union Text with EEA relevance (OJ L 150, 20/05/2014, p. 59). 202 Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology

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