Promoting Blue Biotechnology in Portugal: legal certainty on the access and use of Marine Genetic Resources under national jurisdiction

The NOVA Ocean Knowledge Centre, part of the NOVA School of Law’s Research & Development Centre on Law and Society (CEDIS), will hold an official event to present the results obtained from its participation in the Portuguese Blue Biobank Project.

The event will take place on 3 December 2024, in person, in room 007 of the NOVA School of Law, from 14h30 to 17hoo (Lisbon time), and has the support of the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) through CEDIS.

The theme of the event will be “The role of legislation in promoting the blue biotechnology sector in Portugal”, which will be addressed in two panel discussions. In the first panel, the NOVA Ocean team will present the results obtained in the Portuguese Blue Biobank project. In the second panel, the topic will be debated by a group of experts in the field. There will be room for discussion after the end of both panels.

The Portuguese Blue Biobank is one of the major projects of the Innovation Pact – known as the Blue Bioeconomy Pact – a consortium led by Inovamar, Lda, which embraces the challenge of strengthening and reindustrializing Portuguese industries associated with the exploitation of marine resources. The project is part of the Blue Bioeconomy Pact as a transversal Work Package (WP9).

In the project, NOVA Ocean had the task of preparing a piece of legislation to regulate the activity of marine bioprospecting and the use of resources collected and developed from samples, as well as the use of samples already collected and stored and their development. At the event, NOVA Ocean will present the results of the project, consolidated into draft legislation.

The official language of the event is Portuguese, with some elements in English.