Nagoya Protocol meet concludes, India says good progress

More than 500 delegates representing government academia, UN bodies, civil society organisations and indigenous and local communities participated in the second meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Nagoya Protocol (ICNP).

They "agreed on recommendations relating to key issues for the entry into force and implementation of the ground-breaking treaty on the use of genetic resources," said a statement issued by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Environment Programme.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation, which was agreed upon in 2010 at the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and was considered a big triumph for India and other developing countries, will come into force 90 days after 50 parties have ratified it.

"As of today, five countries have ratified and 93 have signed," the statement said.

India has expressed satisfaction on the "good progress" made on several issues and felt that the Conference moved efficiently and made substantial advancement.

India also announced that it would give equivalent to USD one million for participation of ministerial level representatives from the least developed countries in the Convention of Parties (CoP-11) to be held in October in Hyderabad.

"The first ever discussions on Article 10 on Global Multilateral Benefit Sharing Mechanism helped in paving the way forward on this complex issue," said a Government release here.

"On Article 30 relating to compliance, the pace though rather slow yielded good results. India welcomed the recommendations to CoP-11 to consider the outstanding issues of its work plan in another meeting of ICNP," it said.

India was of the view that the progress made in this meeting had set the ground for further work in preparation for the Protocol's implementation and early entry into force.

"This would contribute in catalysing the pace of ratifications of the Protocol," it said.

The Committee advanced recommendations on compliance, capacity-building, awareness-raising, a clearing-house, guidance to the financial mechanism, resource mobilisation and a global mechanism for benefit-sharing in preparation for the first meeting of the governing body of the Protocol, which is expected to take place in 2014.