Proposals on One Health undermine fair and equitable benefit sharing
By Third World Network
The U.K. has proposed a new target for the Global Biodiversity Framework based on the One Health Approach (OHA). Section B.bis also includes a proposal that GBF implementation should be in line with OHA.
The problem with these proposals is that there is no multilaterally agreed definition of OHA. Its working principles and operational aspects have not been discussed in the context of the CBD and GBF. As a result, the countries will be compelled to look to a Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) on OHA, which is still under development by the Secretariats of four International Organisations, WHO, FAO, OIE and UNEP. Unfortunately, the first draft of JPOA is completely oblivious to developing country rights and interests.
The JPOA, in discussing climate change, fails to recognise common but differentiated responsibilities. It requires countries to adopt legal measures to promote rapid sharing of information and biological materials including pathogens and their digital sequence information, without stressing any obligation on fair and equitable sharing of benefits.
The JPOA aims to build a “leviathan infrastructure” for extracting information and other resources from developing countries in the name of a globally integrated surveillance network for detecting spillover risks from zoonotic and other sources to human health. The central nodes of this large infrastructure such as data integration or analytic units are situated in the developed countries. The developing country laboratories and other institutions serve only as data collecting agents. Building analytic or intelligence capacities at the local or national levels is not a priority.
Accepting the One Health Approach into the GBF would add pressure on developing countries to provide rapid access to genetic resources without legal certainty on benefit sharing. It may also undermine their positions at the WHO, that negotiations for a new pandemic response instrument must abide by CBD and Nagoya Protocol obligations.
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