The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety: an analysis of results

Briefing paper looking into the Biosafety protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The authors discuss the process by which the agreement was reached and ask how strong is the resulting protocol; what does—and doesn’t—it do; and what do the results mean for other trade related multilateral environmental agreements, and their relationship with the WTO.

The paper begins by looking into the principle issues arising from negotiations which it identifies as:

• the scope of the Protocol
• the precautionary principle
• the relationship to other agreements
• liability

It then briefly describes the negotiating positons of the 5 major country groupings before outlining the key elements of the protocol.

It's analysis covers why the negotiations finally succeeded after so many setbacks and the knock on effect of this success in other areas of international environmental policy particularly through it's strong language in relation to other agreements and its treatment of the precautionary principle. Whilst not all of the issues were fully resolved the protocol is deemed a useful step on the road to resolving conflict between trade and environmental policies.