Those who want to access genetic materials must obtain permission from the relevant national "competent authority" and/or through this authority from other right holders according to national law. The terms on which such access is granted are normally documented in a contract, known as a Material Transfer Agreement, which specifies the rights and obligations of the different parties, the mutually agreed terms, and a confirmation of the prior informed consent.
Such MTAs based on national access laws implementing the CBD may take very different forms and may contain very different provisions. MTAs often contain provisions such as the folloing: i) terms limiting who may ibtain access to the material once it has been provided to the requestor; ii) terms allocating ownership of potential intellectual property relating to the genetic resources; iii) a royalty payable on revenues derived from the commercialisation of products derived from the genetic resources, etc. Parties are free to agree on clauses as long as they do not conflict with national law and with the over-all objectives of the CBD.
For materials that are held in international genebanks (mainly of the CGIAR) a special arrangement was made after the coming into force of the CBD. Since 1994, these collections have been held in trust for the international community “under the auspices of the FAO”, which means that FAO plays an important role in determining the MTA used by the CGIAR.

Will Material Transfer Agreements Open Pandora's Box?
States have to determine whether 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. Another approach is taken by a number of mega-biodiverse countries, that see benefit by strictly regulating access in order to be able to negotiate benefit sharing. In their view, biopiracy has been going on too long and needs to be curtailed. Others make an explicit link between access to genetic resources and intellectual property rights, such as the Model Law of the African Union.

Rights of Communities, Farmers, Breeders, and Access to Biological Resources

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.