Category: Policy

I did suggest a couple of days ago that I’d have more to say about the Eighth Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. And here it is, over at the work blog.

If you think I got anything wrong, or missed anything out, or you want further details or clarifications, you can leave comments here if you like, and I’ll try to reply, or get others to do so if I can’t.

Multiplying the budget of CGIAR, the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, would be a good start. And, in a time of great disruptions, we ought to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal 2.4, implementing resilient agricultural practices, with a greater focus on smallholder farmers in developing countries.

That’s from a post by Asaf Tzachor, research associate at the cheerfully named Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, cheerfully entitled Down the Hunger Spiral: Pathways to the Disintegration of the Global Food System. Hard to argue with, except for maybe that SDG 2.5 may be even more important than 2.4

And it was soon backed up by a piece in The Economist which had agricultural R&D in the top 3 value-for-money development interventions for Africa, according to the Copenhagen Consensus.

So what’s the hold-up?

I should of course have pointed this out before, but there was a hashtag for the recently concluded Eighth Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. I’ll have more to say about this somewhat frustrating meeting in due course, but for the moment you can do a lot worse than read the summary in Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Here’s the bottom line, though, if you’re in a hurry:

What exactly happened remains obscure, largely because once negotiations started, they were closed to observers. The facts are the following: a small, closed group of negotiators met day and night from Wednesday evening to the early hours of Saturday morning; according to reports, the group discussed the main controversial items, such as benefit-sharing from DSI ¹ use, and specific payment rates for benefit-sharing; and on Saturday afternoon, plenary was presented with a Chair’s proposed “package,” including a resolution, a revised SMTA text, text for the amendment of Annex I of the Treaty, and terms for intersessional work. Developing countries rejected it as unfair and unbalanced, particularly regarding DSI. In turn, developed countries opposed continuation of intersessional work on the item.

So, after years of negotiation, there was no agreement on enhancing the functioning ² of the ABS regime the Treaty has put in place, called the Multilateral System ³. And no clear way forward to the next meeting, in India in 2021. There was some progress on other important issues, but it’s going to be a bumpy couple of years.