Second meeting of Compliance Committee
The second meeting of the Compliance Committee took place from 6 to 8 February 2006. The meeting discussed several issues relating to the rules of procedure of its meeting and adopted recommendations for submission to COP-MOP/3.
The meeting also analyzed the interim national reports and identified issues that need due attention in order to ensure a good start in the effective implementation of its requirements and the achievement of its objective. The Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH) was another source of information in which the Committee identified some general issues that affect compliance with the requirements of making various types of information available to the BCH.
The Committee submitted all its recommendations to the third meeting of the COP-MOP. The latter considered the recommendations and adopted decision BS-III/1. Several other recommendations were also considered and integrated in other decisions of COP-MOP/3 taking into account their relevance.
Third meeting of Compliance Committee
The
third meeting of the Compliance Committee took place from 5 to 7 March 2007 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Compliance Committee reviewed information compiled by the Secretariat on experience of other multilateral environmental agreements regarding measures concerning cases of repeated non-compliance. It requested the Secretariat to revise the document in accordance with the comments and submit it to the next meeting of the Committee. The Committee followed up on issues arising from its second meeting including the issue of conflict of interest under rule 11 of the rules of procedure, and reviewing general issues of compliance and possible lessons learned from analyzing the interim national reports. It also considered how the Committee might contribute to the upcoming review process of the effectiveness of the Protocol in general and the procedures and mechanisms on compliance, in particular in the context of Article 35 of the Protocol and decision BS-III/15 of the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Protocol. For details see
the report of the meeting contained in document UNEP/CBD/BS/CC/3/3.
Fourth meeting of Compliance Committee
The
fourth meeting of the Compliance Committee took place from 21 to 23 November 2007 in Montreal. The Committee reviewed general issues of compliance on the basis of the information made available by Parties through their first national reports submitted four years after the entry into force of the Protocol. The Committee also refined further its
report on experiences of other multilateral environmental agreements regarding measures concerning repeated cases of non-compliance. It decided to submit to the upcoming fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Protocol a
report that consolidates the work and recommendations of its third and fourth meetings.
COP-MOP 4 considered the
report of the Compliance Committee as well as the Committee’s document on ‘Further Information and Experience Regarding Cases of Repeated Non-Compliance under the Compliance Mechanisms of Other Multilateral Environmental Agreements’ (document
UNEP/CBD/BS/COP-MOP/4/2/Add.1). COP-MOP integrated many of the recommendations of the Committee into its
BS-IV/1 as well as other decisions as relevant. Among other things,
decision BS-IV/1 reminded each Party of its obligation to adopt domestic measures to address illegal transboundary movements of living modified organisms and to report the occurrence of such movements to the BCH. The Parties also decided to postpone consideration or, as appropriate, adoption of measures on repeated cases of non-compliance and encouraged the Committee to meet less than twice a year, within the budget adopted in
BS-IV/7. The decision on compliance also invited Parties to submit to the Secretariat, prior to the fifth meeting of COP-MOP, views on how the supportive role of the Compliance Committee could be improved.
