Ecología

Aguilar Stoen, Mariel; Dhillion, Shivcharn; Rosendal, Kristin National jurisdiction - international dilemmas: bioprospecting within national borders University of Oslo, Norway, m.c.a.stoen@sum.uio.no Symposium 8 - Implementing multilateral environmental agreements on biodiversity: balancing equity and effectiveness The Convention on Biological Diversity outlines a framework for facilitatingaccess to genetic resources and benefit sharing between users and providers of genetic resources. The CBD is a multilateral agreement aiming at governing relations between countries; hence, search and use of genetic resources by national actors within the borders of their own country are not subject to CBD regulations. Still, national bioprospectors collaborate with foreign industry, universities, orother bioprospectors. This often entails exchange of genetic material, extracts or information about the resources collected by the former in their own country. Here, we explore the challenges that this type of cooperative exchange entails for sharing benefits between CBD parties. We use a qualitative multi-case approach to address the question. Our preliminary findings demonstrate that a networkedcooperation between public and private actors in developing countries and developed countries and between public and private actors in developed countries has emerged. New strategies for bioprospecting have become increasingly common, such as bioprospecting texts, databases and existing collections of biological material. At the same time the activities have expanded to marine ecosystems, in bothtropical and temperate waters. The emergence of these new strategies make very difficult to address the issue of benefit sharing, as it is almost impossible to identify whom to share benefits with. In addition, governments in developing countries are passive in relation to the negotiation of agreements leaving the responsibility resting in the shoulders of the organizations that collect material(often public universities and research institutes). However, it seems that even if governments in developed countries are more active and interested in outlining guidelines, the issue of benefit sharing remains elusive. Keywords: bioprospecting, benefit sharing, access, CBD, genetic resources

Aguirre, Alonso The living ocean an evolving oxymoron: Emerging diseases in marine ecosystems WildlifeTrust, USA, aguirre@wildlifetrust.org Symposium 7 - Ecohealth and conservation medicine: a new agenda for public health and biodiversity Emerging infectious diseases, mass mortality events, harmful algal blooms, and anomalous changes in selected marine species abundance and composition -occurrences which can be defined as major marine ecological disturbances -- may signal a decline in ecosystemhealth. There is currently an effort by many scientists to examine the systemic health threats to marine vertebrate species, including marine mammals, as they relate to marine environmental health. Unprecedented number of emerging and re-emerging diseases such as brucellosis in dolphins, aspergillosis in coral reefs and morbillivirus infections linked to large-scale marine mammal die-offs haveoccurred in recent times. Marine turtles are facing a worldwide epidemic of fibropapillomatosis and Florida manatees have been identified harboring skin tumours caused by a papillomavirus with unknown long-term impacts to these

endangered species. One proactive method of trying to get a handle on this largescale problem of disease emergence and resurgence is by surveying sentinel species. Sentinelspecies are the proverbial “canaries in the mineshaft”. They serve as indicators of their environment and may reflect the quality of health in marine ecosystems. The single species approach may provide a series of “snap shots” of environmental changes to determine if animal, human or ecosystem health may be affected. Marine vertebrates are good integrators of changes over space and time and...