A lawyer with a Master’s degree in Public International Law, Christine Frison has just joined the scientific community of the University of Liège. She brings her DecoLawBiodiv project with her, which aims to support the decolonisation of international biodiversity law. With its decolonial perspective and innovative methods, DecoLawBiodiv offers a promising way of transforming conflicts into cooperation and building a future in which biodiversity conservation benefits all stakeholders in an equitable manner.
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ccess and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanisms - where access to genetic resources (generally in developing countries) is negotiated in exchange for benefits used for conservation actions - were created to mitigate the profound inequalities between countries and biodiversity stakeholders. These inequalities are rooted in the colonial history of collecting and using genetic resources (think of European botanical gardens overflowing with ‘exotic’ plants, for example). Today, these inequalities are currently being exacerbated by technological innovations such as Digital Sequence Information (DSI), which are changing the nature of biological research and development. DSI is rekindling the struggle for access to genetic resources between the Global North and Global South. There is therefore an urgent need to analyse the issues at stake by listening to all the players involved in biodiversity conservation and in DSI innovation.
In response to the challenges posed by DSIs, Christine Frison, research professor at the Faculty of Law, Political Science and Criminology at the University of Liège, designed the DecoLawBiodiv project. This project explores how a decolonial reading of biodiversity law can contribute to achieving the international objectives of treaties on the conservation of biodiversity, their sustainable use and fair and equitable ABS.
DecoLawBiodiv aims to tackle the root causes of the North/South divide in ABS by implementing actions such as :
From a theoretical point of view, the DecoLawBiodiv project is innovative in that it uses a decolonial reading grid to study the impact of DSIs on the legal and institutional functioning relating to biodiversity and on the implementation of international ABS obligations. This perspective makes it possible to analyse, from a holistic point of view, how new technologies influence existing frameworks and how these frameworks can be adapted to better serve the objectives of justice and equity in biodiversity conservation.
The methodological originality of the project lies in the mobilisation of different interdisciplinary research methods, including the 'Circle of Dialogue of Wisdom’, which is a decolonial research method originating from indigenous communities in Colombia. The 'Circle of Dialogue of Wisdom’ will be tested with partners (local farming communities, NGOs, civil society, research groups, etc.) in three formerly colonised countries (Bolivia, India, South Africa). "It is an approach that aims to transform the ABS/DSI conflict into mutual understanding and support between stakeholders, and to lead to a decolonised co-creation of knowledge for an effective international legal regime for biodiversity conservation," concludes Christine Frison.
Thanks to the arrival of Christine Frison and this ambitious research project, an unexplored area of study is opening up at the University of Liège, leading to the creation of a new research centre: EcoLAWgy.
L'édition 2026 de la Nuit des Chercheur·es se tiendra le vendredi 25 septembre 2026. Impliquée dans la Nuit des Chercheur·es depuis sa création, l'ULiège vous invite à participer à cette manifestation de culture scientifique.
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