The governance of genetic resources remains contested at the intersection of international trade law and biodiversity conservation. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, ratified December 1993) embody fundamentally incompatible premises — the former facilitating patent protection over biotechnological innovations, the latter affirming national sovereignty and equitable benefit-sharing. A foundational source of this conflict is the category mistake of treating genetic resources as tangible goods when the object of research and development is natural information (Vogel, J. H. (1992). Privatisation as a Conservation Policy. CIRCIT, Melbourne. (Republished as: Vogel, J. H. (1994). Genes for Sale. Oxford University Press, New York).;Vogel et al., Plants People Planet 4:13–22, 2022;). This study presents a bibliometric analysis of scholarship addressing this regulatory conflict from 1992 to 2025, examining publication patterns, geographic distribution, citation dynamics, and thematic evolution to assess how academic discourse engages with access and benefit-sharing (ABS) challenges facing biodiversity-rich nations. Analysis of 541 Web of Science publications reveals persistent structural imbalances in knowledge production mirroring the inequities the TRIPS-CBD conflict perpetuates. Publications from developed nations (USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands) dominate high-impact journals and accumulate disproportionate citations, while megadiverse countries (Brazil, India, Indonesia, Colombia, Kenya) remain underrepresented. Thematic mapping reveals evolution from early concerns regarding rainforest bioprospecting and pharmaceutical patents (1992–2005) toward contemporary disputes over digital sequence information on genetic resources, marine genetic resources under the High Seas Treaty (2023), and synthetic biology applications. Notably, the economic literature — including critiques of bilateral ABS architecture where competition among providers drives benefit-sharing returns toward marginal cost (Vogel et al., Plants People Planet 4:13–22, 2022), and the concept of bounded openness over natural information (Vogel et al., Plants People Planet 4:13–22, 2022) (May, Rev Int Stud 34:69–92, 2008) — remains largely absent from the corpus, reflecting disciplinary imbalance in a field driven predominantly by legal scholarship (Ruiz Muller, Genetic resources as natural information (0 edn), Routledge, 2015). The adoption of the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge establishes the first binding multilateral disclosure of origin requirement, yet the fundamental TRIPS-CBD tension persists in modified rather than resolved form. Despite three decades of scholarship, research consistently documents implementation deficits: ABS legislation exists in over 70 countries, yet documented monetary benefit-sharing instances remain limited. Academic discourse reproduces power asymmetries characterising the TRIPS-CBD conflict — nations providing genetic resources remain marginalised in shaping scholarly narratives informing policy. The terminology itself is contested: while provider countries employ the term “biopiracy,” many user countries prefer “unauthorised access” — a linguistic distinction reflecting divergent normative positions (McManis, Wash Univ Law Q 76:255–297, 1998). Four structural priorities emerge: mandatory patent disclosure requirements; capacity building enabling biodiversity-rich nations to participate equitably in research and negotiations; multilateral benefit-sharing mechanisms for digital sequence information on genetic resources; and recognition that economic rents on natural information can fund the transition to binding land-use limits that induce conservation — a pathway toward (Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, Liveright Publishing, New York, 2016) Half-Earth proposal. Achieving SDG 15 (Life on Land) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) necessitates restructuring global governance to ensure conservation incentives and distributive justice operate synergistically.
Pallavi Mishra (Sat,) studied this question.