Click here to witness the follow-up of the first meeting between the director I. D. Termin, Barbara Reed, Mr. Doneau and Reginald U. Later.

For those who do not have a fast enough connection or with whom the Flash-drive doesn’t work, read the conversation here

National Policies

States have to determine whether and under which conditions they want to share their genetic resources. They have to deal with the legal issues, the institutional ones, and especially also the level of participation.
First a country needs to determine whether they want to restrict access at all, or whether they can support conservation while having an open policy towards use. This view is illustrated by the ‘Nordic approach’, a joint policy of the Scandinavian countries (see following link for more information). Another approach is taken by a number of mega-biodiverse countries, that hope to negotiate favourable benefit-sharing terms by strictly restricting and regulating access. In their view, biopiracy has been going on too long and needs to be curtailed (click here for more information). Others propose an explicit link between access to genetic resources and intellectual property rights in one regulatory framework, such as the Model Law of the African Union.


African Model Legislation


Institutional issues include: who within the country will provide the national authority (often Ministry for the Environment); what are the procedures, this authority will work by; specifically, what is the role of the communities and indigenous peoples whose heritage these genetic resources are, and who have the traditional knowledge to go with them. Again, different countries take different routes here.

All in all, it has taken many years since the coming into force of the CBD before the national laws were tabled. It also took many years before national authorities were established. And still today such national authorities may not have sufficient instructions, or the negotiating capacity to handle requests for materials. Observers complain that during the period of establishing legislation and national authorities there was a vacuum in which on the one hand “biopiracy” could continue, and on the other hand legitimate requests for genetic resources could not be processed and exchange was obstructed.