Nagoya Protocol Ratified by EU

Yesterday, the European Union Council of Ministers adopted a decision approving the ratification of a protocol meant to facilitate access to genetic resources and to provide the fair sharing of commercial benefits with provider countries. The target date for ratification is July 2014, according to the EU.

The Council adopted two texts related to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization. One was a decision approving its ratification, and the other was a regulation (referred to as the “EU access and benefit-sharing regulation”), which modify the EU legislation in order to be in line with the requirements of the Protocol.

The Nagoya Protocol of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted on 29 October 2010. Its purpose is to set minimal requirements on access and benefit-sharing (ABS) for the use of genetic resources (GR) and associated traditional knowledge (TK), including those belonging to indigenous people. It sets several principles such as prior and informed consent of the country of origin of the resource, or of the indigenous peoples through mutually agreed terms.

The protocol will enter into force three months after the 50^th ratification. At press time, the text had been ratified by 29 states and the EU ratification will count as a new one. The ongoing process of ratification by the EU and likely its member states is closely followed as it would lead to the number of 50 ratifications needed.

If the EU and its members ratified the Nagoya Protocol in time, it could lead to an entry into force of the Protocol by the next planned biennial high-level meeting of the CBD. That meeting, the Conference of the Parties serving as the first Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol (COP/MOP), is scheduled for October 2014 in Seoul, South Korea.

Otherwise, the next opportunity to hold the first meeting of parties would be the next CBD Conference of Parties in 2016.

As an additional impetus, parties to the CBD agreed in the Aichi targets, which are part of the CBD parties’ strategic plan for biodiversity for 2011-2020, that the Nagoya Protocol should enter into force before the end of 2015.

IP Watch