Economic Study On Benefit-sharing And Property Arrangements Issues Related To Plant Genetic Resources

Plant Genetic Resources (PGRs) are the basis for biotechnological innovation and the loss of PGRs shall straightly threaten China's food security and further sustainable development in agriculture. The conservation and utilization process of PGRs is an extremely complex system involving with many stakeholders. Unfortunately, within the context of existing intellectual property system which recognizes none but the interests of downstream developers and users, the absence of appropriate incentive mechanism for those upstream stakeholders who maintain and provide PGRs is the principal underlying cause for genetic erosion. Therefore, to establish equitable and efficient benefit-sharing frameworks that are able to stimulate all stakeholders' enthusiasm is the key to assuring sustainable working of PGRs system, moreover corresponding property arrangements for PGRs are the institutional foundation for benefit-sharing schemes.Taking seed industry in China as an example, the dissertation focuses on―right value‖and―right subject‖which consists the principal questions associated with property-right arrangements. Firstly, the evolution of international regime on benefit sharing is analyzed and some critical branch points are addressed intensively. Secondly microeconomic theories and econometric models are used to examine the reasons for the above divergence through estimating the PGR value from the perspectives of society, researchers and farmers respectively. Then, each agent's contribution to innovation and incentive effectives under different property-right arrangements are reviewed by means of investigating the structure, functions and working mechanisms of PGR system; meanwhile case experiences from Guangxi Participatory Breeding Project are collected to supplement the theoretical research. Finally, policy implications for China's institutional options are presented. The main research findings are summarized below:Market mechanism can't resolve benefit-sharing issues because the providers and users won't recognize the contribution of PGR at the homogenous level. From social objective, PGRs certainly create substantial social value. The sample of 804 soybean accessions with race 4 of soybean cyst nematode shows that net social benefit generated by one marginal accession could be more than 100 thousands RMB. However, from researcher's objective, R&D value is quite small because both marginal value and average R& D value of PGR are less than 100 RMB. Obviously, users'willingness to pay (WTP) is much smaller than real contribution of PGR. Such difference results in the major divergence in international negotiations. Therefore, the amount of monetary benefit-sharing should not be directly equal to PGR's marginal contribution.Without efficient benefit-sharing mechanisms, farmers will increasingly give up their voluntary behavior to protect PGR with market development. From farmer's objective, it is found that farming households who live in those communities with complete products market and commercial seed system will gradually reduce their efforts to on-farm conserve PGR with the development of modern agriculture and income growth. Such effect is very statistically significant at the 0.05 level.Benefit-sharing would definitely fail unless property arrangements could be installed accordingly. Due to the absence of property-right regime, stakeholders don't realize genuine value of PGR, thus don't have enough incentives to promote sustainable utilization of PGRs. Since many stakeholders are involved and most of innovations are intertemporal and interregional activities, the representative bodies of property right are hard to be defined. Given that China's current land tenure system and fully recognized national sovereignty, partial property rights could be assigned to local farming collective organizations such as administrative villages or farmers'co-operation. As for benefit-sharing practices, contract is still the premier option.The findings have the following implications for the Chinese government in policy-making and international negotiations over benefit-sharing issues. China should reform current management system of biological genetic resources and define the specific ownership; polish existing intellectual property system and plan to establish identification and registration system for landraces and traditional varieties; give funding priorities of germplasm conservation initiatives to on-farm projects; build national PGR foundation with partial expropriation of patent ,plant variety right loyalties and seed sales, and promote benefit-sharing in pilot communities by means of participatory projects and conservation contracts.