Events – Seminar on access and benefit sharing, Dr Bruno David

Dr Bruno David, a natural product chemist and  pharmacist with more than 20 years of experience in academia and industry, will hold a seminar on the Nagoya protocol/access and benefit sharing on the morning of 4 October 2021. The one-hour seminar entitled “How to ensure legal certainty when accessing genetic resources?” will be followed by a question and answer session of the same length.

Every natural product researcher in academia and industry is concerned about legal access to biodiversity, and particularly the need to share the fair and equitable benefits arising from the utilization of genetic/biological resources – a process established by the Rio Convention (1992) and reaffirmed by the Nagoya Protocol (2010). Access and benefit sharing is also enshrined in EU law (EU N°511/20142). Dr David’s presentation will describe how legal access to biodiversity samples is achieved, exemplified by practical examples from different parts of the world. The seminar will cover prior informed consent (PIC), mutually agreed term (MAT) contracts, and administrative formalities and obligations.

Dr David was formerly the leader of Natural Products Drug Discovery at Pierre Fabre Pharmaceutical Group (1990-2007) and Director of Phytochemistry and Biodiversity until 2020. He is a member of the French National Academy of Pharmacy and has been active in the field of access and benefit sharing at Pierre Fabre and many professional federations and associations dealing with genetic resources and legal certainty issues (LEEM, FEBEA, Cosmetics Europe, UNITIS and ICC). He was also member of the Strategic Orientation Council of the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity and remains active as an expert adviser to several French Ministries and the European Commission as a representative of the users of genetic resources.

Image credit: bilberry plant by Jouko Lehmuskallio (NatureGate)