Cabinet approves signing of Nagoya Protocol on biodiversity

• According to the Environment Ministry, the genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge can be used to develop a wide range of products and services for human benefit, such as medicines, agricultural practices, cosmetics etc.
• India is a Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which is one of the agreements adopted during the Rio Earth Summit held in 1992.
• One of the three objectives of the CBD relates to ABS, which refers to the way in which genetic resources may be accessed, and benefits resulting from their use shared by the users with the countries that provide them.The CBD prescribes that access to genetic resources is subject to national legislation. Accordingly, India after extensive consultative process had enacted Biological Diversity Act in 2002 for giving effect to the provisions of the CBD.However, in the near absence of user country measures, once the resource leaves the country providing the resources, there is no way to ensure compliance of ABS provisions in the country where it is used.Towards this, a protocol on access and benefit sharing has been negotiated under the aegis of CBD, and adopted by the tenth Conference of Parties (CoP-10) held in Nagoya.India has participated actively and contributed meaningfully in the ABS negotiations which formally started about six years back.
• "The objective of the Nagoya Protocol on ABS is fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources, including by appropriate access to genetic resources and by appropriate transfer of relevant technologies," the Ministry said.It is expected that the ABS Protocol which is a key missing pillar of the CBD, would address the concern of misappropriation or biopiracy of its genetic resources.