Legal Aspects of Implementing the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety

This book, the first in a new series that focuses on treaty implementation for sustainable development, examines key legal aspects of implementing the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at national and international levels. The volume provides a serious contribution to the current legal and political academic debates on biosafety by discussing key issues under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety that affect the further design of national and international law on biosafety, and analyzing recent progress in the development of domestic regulatory regimes for biosafety. It also examines the legal, political, economic, and practical challenges and solutions encountered in recent efforts to develop and implement domestic biosafety regulations, with a focus on developing countries. In the year of the fifth UN Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, at the signature of a new Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Protocol on Liability and Redress, this timely book examines recent developments in biosafety law and policy.

Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger is Director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL) in Montreal, Canada, Affiliated Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL) at Cambridge University and head of the Environment and Sustainable Development Law Program of the International Development Law Organisation (IDLO) in Rome, Italy. She serves as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chile Faculty of Law, as co-editor of the Treaty Implementation for Sustainable Development series for Cambridge University Press and as Senior Research Director for Sustainable Prosperity, a policy research network on the Green Economy. She has authored or edited more than eighty publications, including fourteen books in three languages such as: Sustainable Development in World Investment Law (2010) and Sustainable Development in World Trade Law (2005) with Dr M. Gehring; Sustainable Development Law: Principles, Practices and Prospects (2004) with A. Khalfan; and Sustainable Justice: Reconciling Economic, Social and Environmental Law (2004) with H. E. Judge C. G. Weeramantry.

Frederic Perron-Welch is Programme Coordinator of the CISDL Sustainable Biodiversity and Biosafety Law Research Programme in Montreal, Canada. He holds a Certificate of Specialization in Environmental Law from the Marine and Environmental Law Institute at Dalhousie University and has represented the CISDL at numerous meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). He interned with the Biosafety Division of the CBD in 2009 and has worked with environmental NGOs throughout Canada, including Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), East Coast Environmental Law Association (ECELAW), Canadian Environmental Network - Réseau canadien de l'environnement (RCEN), Canada Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre and the Living Oceans Society.

Christine Frison is a Legal Research Fellow with the CISDL Sustainable Biodiversity and Biosafety Law Programme and a lawyer specializing in biodiversity, agro-biodiversity and biosafety issues. She currently conducts a joint Ph.D. research programme as an affiliated junior researcher at the Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (University of Leuven - KU Leuven, Belgium) and at the Centre for Philosophy of Law (University of Louvain - UC Louvain, Belgium). She served as a legal adviser to the Belgian Federal Ministry of Environment between 2006 and 2009, where she remains a member of the Belgian Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) Contact Group. She carries out consultancy contracts for various international organizations (including the United Nations Environment Programme and Bioversity International), university research centers and NGOs. She has authored a number of publications and is the main editor for Plant Genetic Resources and Food Security: Stakeholder Perspectives on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2011) with J. T. Esquinas-Alcázar and F. López.