Benefit sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and in-situ conservation. by Wenjuan Cheng, Alessio D’Amato, Giacomo Pallante SEEDS is an interuniversity research centre. It develops research and higher education projects in the fields of ecological and environmental economics, with a special focus on the role of policy and innovation. Main fields of action are environmental policy, economics of innovation, energy economics and policy, economic evaluation by stated preference techniques, waste management and policy, climate change and development. The SEEDS Working Paper Series are indexed in RePEc and Google Scholar. Papers can be downloaded free of charge from the following websites: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/. Enquiries:
[email protected] SEEDS Working Paper 10/2018 May 2018 Wenjuan Cheng, Alessio D’Amato, Giacomo Pallante The opinions expressed in this working paper do not necessarily reflect the position of SEEDS as a whole. Bene t sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and in-situ conservation. Wenjuan Cheng , Alessio DAmato ,y Giacomo Pallante z JEL Codes: O38 , Q16, Q57 Abstract The agricultural genetic diversity is reducing at an accelerating pace. Bene t sharing mechanisms are well-known instruments to incentivize local genetic resource providers to maintain in-situ diversity and to avoid free-riding behaviour by multinational bioprospecting rms. We explore the role of these mechanisms in a setting where the output of bioprospecting activities (i.e. a modern seeds variety), competes with traditional agriculture, and the latter is necessary to conserve the genetic pool from which the multinational could extract the resources for developing new modern varieties in the future.