Hello! Here is a short film that, in my view, portrays the use of marine genetic resources as it stands right now.
The movie shows a man taking flowers from a public garden – a metaphor to the global ocean – to decorate his living room. The film proposes alternative options regarding benefit sharing.
Today researchers sample marine life (sometimes using the traditional knowledge of local communities to access interesting organisms and marine areas in a country) and, upon returning back home, they privatize, and in some cases commercialize, “their” samples or the valuable products derived from them. [Are they playing by rules of the “public garden”?]
This is a nice poetic introduction to a complex issue – the tragedy of the marine commons. Of course today’s reality in the oceans is more complex than this short animation. The battle for marine genetic resources is intensifying on all fronts with high stakes and huge commercial interests – not only decorative as in film – in the balance. Plus the law will change depending on the geography, i.e. on where MGRs are collected: in national waters (and in which country?); or in the high sea? The film evokes an individual (say a scientist, or a private company) collecting genetic resources in national waters without the consent of national authorities. A biggest problem is international waters: should they remain free for all as far as MGRs’ harvest is concerned? For whose benefit? And who will be the policeman there?