Biodiscovery and policy

Currently, there is no comprehensive policy framework for biodiscovery activities in New Zealand. Present legislative frameworks provide in part for biodiscovery activity. There are a number of reasons why the government wants to start looking at the development of a comprehensive framework for biodiscovery, including:

• The possibility that gaps in the overall management of these activities could be leading to biological material being taken from New Zealand without our knowledge.
• A more co-ordinated and comprehensive policy approach may better generate and optimise the capture of benefits, thereby increasing New Zealand's ability to take advantage of bioprospecting opportunities.
• There is a lack of clear guidelines around the use of the traditional knowledge associated with biological materials.

In March 2010, Dr Alice Hume from the Ministry of Economic Development biodiscovery team attended the NZBIO Conference 2010.  Alice presented an overview of the development of a domestic regime for Access and Benefit Sharing in New Zealand. Alice talked about the drivers for domestic policy development, the process to date and how a domestic regime may work. The presentation Alice gave can be found below.

Because of the wide-ranging consequences and difficulties in implementing a biodiscovery policy it has been recognised that consultation and engagement is a vitally important part of the policy process and a multi-phase approach has been undertaken.

• Biodiscovery presentation to NZBIO Conference 2010 [220 kB PDF]
• Consultation and engagement activity