Capacity Building Workshop on the Nagoya Protocol for the Caribbean

A sub-regional capacity building workshop on Nagoya Protocol for the Carribean was held in Georgetown, Guyana on May 19-22, 2014. The objective of the workshop was to promote further understanding of the Protocol's requirements and to strengthen capacity to ratify/accede to the Protocol and prepare for its effective implementation with the view to contributing to the achievement of Aichi Biodiversity Target 16. The participants were also introduced to the pilot phase of the Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) Clearing House and take part in hands-on training on how to use it to find and retrieve information and how to register and manage records in the central portal.

Nagoya Protocol aims to provide a greater legal certainty and transparency for providers and users of genetic resources to strengthen the opportunities for fair and equitable sharing of benefits from their use. It will be implemented 90 days after 50 countries have completed the ratification process.

In his statement, Convention on Biological Diversity Executive Secretary, Braulio Fereira De Souza Dias, urged all countries in the sub-region to ratify or accede to the Protocol before July 7, 2014 so they can be part of the first meeting of the Parties to the Protocol in October 2014 as full Parties. This will enable them to take important role in the first decisions upon implementation of the Protocol. He encouraged them to develop concrete road maps and action plans towards the ratification and implementation of the Protocol during the workshop.

Read Mr. Dias' complete statement at http://www.cbd.int/doc/speech/2014/sp-2014-05-19-abs-en.pdf.