Timothy Hodges

The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its 2010 Nagoya Protocol brought about a breakthrough in global policy making. They combined a concern for the environment with a commitment to resolving longstanding human injustices regarding access to, and use of biological resources. In particular, the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities was no longer going to be exploited without fair benefit sharing. Yet, for 25 years after the adoption of the CBD, there were no major benefit sharing agreements that led to significant funding streams for indigenous communities. This changed with the signing of the Rooibos Benefit Sharing Agreement in South Africa, described in this paper. As the authors report, the Rooibos Agreement is a superlative in two respects. It is the biggest benefit sharing agreement between industry and indigenous peoples to date. It is also the first industry-wide agreement to be formed in accordance with biodiversity legislation. This article is a co-production between traditional knowledge holders, the lawyer who represented their interests, the Co-Chair of the Nagoya Protocol negotiations, and an ethicist who analyzed the major challenges of this historic agreement. With no precedent in the benefit sharing world, the agreement stands as a concrete example of the ‘art of the possible.’ Although the rooibos case is unique in a number of aspects, the experience offers many transferable insights, including: patience; incrementalism; honesty; trust; genuine dialogue; strong legal support; a shared recognition that a fair, win-win deal is possible; government leadership; and unity amongst indigenous peoples. Such ingredients of success can apply well beyond southern Africa.

We study degenerations of the Belavin R-matrices via the infinite dimensional operators defined by Shibukawa-Ueno. We define a two-parameter family of generalizations of the Shibukawa-Ueno R-operators. These operators have finite dimensional representations which include Belavin's R-matrices in the elliptic case, a two-parameter family of twisted affinized Cremmer-Gervais R-matrices in the trigonometric case, and a two-parameter family of twisted generalized Jordanian R-matrices in the rational case. We find finite dimensional representations which are compatible with the elliptic to trigonometric and rational degeneration. We further show that certain members of the elliptic family of operators have no finite dimensional representations. These R-operators unify and generalize earlier constructions of Felder and Pasquier, Ding and Hodges, and the authors, and illuminate the extent to which the Cremmer-Gervais R-matrices are degenerations of Belavin's R-matrix.