INBio-Merck bioprospecting agreement
Contrato de bioprospección INBio–Merck
- Date
- 1991 · confidence high
- Place
- Santo Domingo de Heredia, Heredia, Costa Rica
- Credited to
- National Biodiversity Institute (INBio, Costa Rica), Rodrigo Gámez and Merck & Co.
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
INBio, founded in 1989 to inventory Costa Rica's biodiversity, signed an agreement with Merck in 1991 under which the company paid for access to samples and shared benefits with conservation. It was the first major bioprospecting experience with benefit sharing.
The agreement was later assessed as having modest commercial results; INBio lost funding and wound up its operations around 2018-2019, with its collections transferred to the State. Its effectiveness as a model is debated.
What it led to
- a model of access-and-benefit-sharing agreements that inspired the Nagoya Protocol
- local parataxonomists for the national biodiversity inventory
- a debate on biopiracy and sovereignty over genetic resources