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Summary of Working Groups I and II |
| Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity,
Wednesday 16 February 2005 |
Summary of Working Group I
Working Group I continued to consider - under agenda item 4 – an International regime on access and benefit sharing of genetic resources: nature, scope and elements. The Co-Chairs presented a text covering possible objectives and elements of an international regime and after input from the governments representatives agreed to provide a revised text on Thursday. At this stage there remains no agreement of whether an international regime on access and benefit sharing should be one instrument such as a treaty or a number if instruments or whether such a regime should be legally binding or voluntary.
Summary of Working Group II
Working Group II considered agenda items 5, 6, and 7. Under agenda item 5, there was agreement by government representatives that further information was needed on national definitions and other definitions for such terms as access to genetic resources, benefit sharing, commercialization, derivatives, provider, user stakeholder ex-situ collection, and voluntary nature. Some delegates noted working in the area of environmental law at an international level in many languages requires clarity and common understanding of sometime even simple terms.
Agenda item 6 also called of further studies and pilot projects to consider certificates of origin, source or legal provenance noting the need to consider the reasons (rationale), needs and objectives of proposed certificates and what should be their desirable characteristics, above all government representatives wanted a practical cost efficient approach.
No consensus has been achieved as yet on further research into measures to ensure compliance with benefit sharing arrangements but negotiations will continue of this item (7) on Thursday.
Thursday the governments will also consider ways to measure (indicators) the success or otherwise of whether genetic resources are being accessed and whether benefits of that access are flowing back to provider countries and their communities.
Keywords: Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-sharing; Economics, Trade and Incentive Measures; Intellectual Property Rights |
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