COP-MOP 11 – LEGN contributes to mainstreaming biosafety legislation
During COP 16 of the CBD (Cali, Colombia), the Development Law Service LEGN) participated in a side-event on biosafety mainstreaming that was organized by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
On a panel that included the Executive Secretary of the CBD, colleagues from the Secretariat of the CBD and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), LEGN detailed its long-standing support to Members in developing, amending and strengthening their national legal frameworks on a wide array of pressing technical issues to achieve a world free of hunger and malnutrition, where everyone can have physical and economic access to high-quality food to live active and healthy lives.
LEGN stressed the importance of its multidisciplinary and collaborative approach, which is particularly important in a field such as biosafety, where a holistic approach to environmental conservation, the sustainable use of biodiversity and potentially beneficial biotechnological advances is required. LEGN also expanded on its ongoing tripartite collaboration with the Secretariat of the CBD and the UNEP Montevideo Environmental Law Programme.
With a view to furthering knowledge and visibility on the role of legislation for biosafety, the current LEGN-led global projects on biosafety legislation – UNUN/GLO/1249/UEP and UNUN/GLO/1254/CBD - foster the development and broad dissemination of a diagnostic tool to analyze and identify gaps in national legislation to implement the Cartagena Protocol. The projects also provide technical legal drafting assistance to the Dominican Republic, Gabon, Saint Lucia and the Seychelles, while undertaking active efforts to reach additional countries through awareness-raising, capacity-building and outreach activities in the context of the tripartite collaboration.
In this context, the recently published Biosafety Technical Series Issue 6: Legislative Study on Biosafety Mainstreaming, to which LEGN contributed, is a timely contribution to the further expansion of knowledge and support with biosafety legislation.
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