International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

Ministers discuss in New York the connections of the Nagoya Protocol and the International Treaty

21/09/2011

Rome/New York - Ministers of Agriculture, Environment and Foreign Affairs and well as senior intergovernmental officials from more than 30 countries will discuss tomorrow the close linkages between the Nagoya Protocol and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources during a briefing organized in conjunction with the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The event will offer the participants the opportunity to gain more familiarity with the close connections and complementarities between the two international instruments on genetic resources with concrete examples, like the ongoing contribution of the Benefit-sharing Fund of the Treaty to on farm conservation of food crops worldwide and a number of on-the-ground activities on capacity building jointly organized by the Secretariats.

“We have to improve our relation with nature and the global crises we have witnessed during 2011 are a proof of it”, says Ahmed Djoghlaf, Secretary of the CBD, who add that these instruments “integrate and address the challenges of food security, agrobiodiversity and climate change, so they need to be known and used by policy makers, government officials and the society.

Dr Bhatti, Secretary of the International Treaty, underlines “the importance of the critical role of these instruments, as governments have the mandate and the moral obligation to respond in a coherent way to the current problems of agrobiodiversity”. He adds that it is imperative “to help farmers to produce more in an environmentally sustainable way, while conserving the diversity of food crops that the world will need for food security through the conservation of our plants and genetic resources”.

By supporting the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, the International Treaty and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-sharing create incentives to conserve biodiversity, sustainably use its components, and further enhance the contribution of biodiversity to sustainable development and human well-being. The International Treaty has been in force since 2004 and the Nagoya Protocol will enter into force 90 days after ratification by 50 Parties to the Convention. The event comes the day after the signing ceremony organized by the UN Office of Legal Affairs that allowed Head of States and Governments to sign the Protocol, up to 54. The list of signatories to the Nagoya Protocol is available online.

This briefing comes also during the UN Decade on Biodiversity that is intended to extend the mandate of the International Year of Biodiversity of 2010 to the next ten years, and to implement the Aichi Biodiversity Targets under a more universal and coherent framework.   

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