Interplay of National and International Laws on Access to Biological Resources and Benefit Sharing

International laws, emerging often from legally binding global conventions and treaties, operate through national laws extending their jurisdiction beyond their national boundaries but may also sometime override them. When a country becomes contracting party to several such treaties, and their provisions seem to be in conflict, problems may arise in fulfilling national obligations. Provisions on intellectual property rights under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the WTO-TRIPS Agreement over products and processes, based on biological resources, illustrate this point. Likewise, provisions on sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources under CBD and the Nagoya Protocol on one side and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture and the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture on the other, seem to differ in many ways. This paper discusses the complex interplay of governance of access to genetic resources and benefit sharing at the international and national levels.