Third Try Set For CBD Biodiversity Benefit-Sharing Treaty

The third attempt at concluding negotiations on a draft protocol text on international biodiversity access and benefit-sharing will take place in Montreal on 18-21 September, according to official sources. Delegates at the meeting will try to agree on the text, before the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya, Japan, in October.

According to the CBD, the discussions of the Inter-regional Negotiating Group will be “based on the Annex to the report of the resumed ninth meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing,” held in Montreal from 10-16 July, which was itself meant to finalise the protocol drafted at the previous meeting in Cali, Colombia, in March (IPW, Biodiversity, 20 July 2010).

The meeting will be smaller than previous ones, said a CBD spokesperson, with “only some of the countries, primarily those which are the main actors in the Inter-regional Negotiating Group participating.”