14/03/2011

The Global Consultation Conference on Famers’ Rights, held 23–25 November in Addis Ababa brought together 51 participants from 30 countries to look at issues of critical importance in recognizing and rewarding farmers for their roles as the stewards and innovators of agricultural biodiversity and contributors to the global pool of genetic resources. Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI), which established The Farmers’ Rights Project, hosted the Conference as the culmination of a consultation process that included a questionnaire survey sent to stakeholders around the world in advance of the event.

The 3-day Conference considered such questions as: how to ensure that traditional knowledge can be shared without being misappropriated, and how to ensure farmers have sufficient participation in determining how the Treaty Benefit-sharing Fund both distributes and receives funds.

H.E. Mr. Sileshi Getahum, Ethiopia’s State Minister of Agriculture, opened the Conference, with Dr. Abera Deressa of the Ministry of Agriculture chairing the opening ceremony and Dr. Regine Anderson of FNI chairing the plenary sessions. Participants heard presentations from experts and stakeholders and held discussions to share views and experiences on the issues. Although Farmers’ Rights are among the core objectives of the Treaty, responsibility for implementing them rests with national governments. The FNI project is working to develop a solid empirical basis, based on research, to move the discussion ahead, in the hope to pave the way for identifying options and processes for implementing Farmers’ Rights at national as well as international level.

The second day of the Conference was devoted to regional consultations which resulted in a series of proposals that are being shared with the Contracting Parties of the Treaty at GB4. Among the major ideas that emerged from the regional discussions in terms of issues to take before the Governing Body were those dealing with:

• building farmers’ capacity to participate in decision-making regarding their rights to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seed and propagating material,
• establishing measures to ensure that traditional knowledge as well as systems that generate such knowledge are respected and promoted,
• studying the relationship between benefit-sharing and fair-trade systems with a view to improving the benefit sharing mechanism of the Treaty and review the effectiveness of the flow of resources under the Treaty,
• supporting the countries in building capacity among farmers to participate in decision making and for adapting their plant genetic resources management plans to climate change,
• urging countries to develop national libraries on traditional knowledge associated with plant genetic resources and requesting the Secretariat to initiate work on developing a global library,
• urging countries and CGIAR Centers to strengthen the transfer of farmers’ varieties currently conserved in national and international gene banks to community gene banks to enable farmers to access them more easily.

In addition, joint recommendations called for the Governing Body to study options for improving national seed legislation, and called for national governments to recognize that formal and local seed systems are complementary. Both should be supported in national legislation. The Joint recommendations also called for the Governing Body to establish an Ad Hoc working Group to develop voluntary guidelines for the implementation of Farmers’ Rights at the national level.