ABS on genetic resources straight from the horse’s mouth

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), recently gave a very nice, clear answer to a question on the relationship between the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) regimes of the CBD and of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It was at the Special Event on Food Security and Genetic Diversity at FAO last Friday, which preceded the Fifteenth Regular Session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources, which started yesterday. You can hear what he says in a couple of different ways. You can fast forward to about 2:07:30 in the video of the event on the FAO website, and watch for about 3 minutes. Or, if you don’t mind only listening, you can click below. Dr Ferreira de Souza Dias focuses on Annex 1 of the Treaty, but of course the collections listed under Article 15 are in the same boat. The questioner is my old friend Desterio Nyamongo, head of Kenya’s genebank.

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