ENB @ ABS-4; 30 January - 3 February 2006; Granada, Spain

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"> ENB @ ABS-4; 30 January - 3 February 2006; Granada, Spain

Fourth meeting of the Ad hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing of the Convention on Biological Diversity

30 January - 3 February 2006 | Granada, Spain

English

Français

Español

Daily Web coverage

HTM

PDF

TXT

HTM

PDF

TXT

HTM

PDF

TXT

Curtain
Raiser

Mon 30

Tue 31

Wed 1

Thu 2

Fri 3 &
SUMMARY

Click on the above days to view previous ENB Web coverage

Highlights for Thursday, 2 February 2006

Delegates to the fourth meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group (WG) on Access and Benefit-sharing (ABS) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) met in the Committee of the Whole to address a revised Chair’s text on an international regime on ABS. A contact group addressed issues related to the certificate of origin/source/legal provenance and compliance measures with prior informed consent (PIC) and mutually agreed terms (MAT).

Above photo: Delegates from the EU in a huddle consulting on the Chair's Text.

COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

INTERNATIONAL REGIME ON ABS:



Chair Margarita Clemente (Spain) opened discussions on a revised Chair’s text. Above photo L-R: Chair Clemente in discussion with Hadil Fontes Da Rocha Vianna (Brazil), Fernando Casas (Colombia) and Carlos Martin-Novella (Spain)	Ethiopia, speaking on behalf of AFRICA, welcomed the text, stressing its willingness to advance negotiations on an international ABS regime. Above photo: Tewolde Berhan Gerber Egzhiaber (Ethiopia)	The EU expressed concern, noting that many of their submissions were not reflected in the text and insisting on bracketing it in its entirety. Above photo L-R: Elfriede Anna More (Austria on behalf of the EU) and Nicola Notaro (The European Community)

SWITZERLAND requested deleting a bracketed reference stating that the regime is legally binding, and suggested that the regime could be composed of one or several binding or non-binding instruments.

Above photo: François Pythoud, Albert Spielmann, Jürg Bally and Robert Lamb (Switzerland)

Chair Clemente then established a regionally-balanced Friends of the Chair group to discuss the text. In the beginning of the afternoon session, Chair Clemente announced that the Committee of the Whole would be adjourned to Friday to allow for further deliberations in the Friends of the Chair group.

Above photo L-R: Chair Clemente with ENB writers Elisa Morgera and Elsa Tsioumani.

CONTACT GROUP ON THE CERTIFICATES/ PIC AND MAT:

In the morning, the contact group addressed the potential characteristics of a certificate of origin, based on a presentation on a possible design for a web-based permitting system, including check-points at several stages and a central clearing-house mechanism.

Above photos L-R: Contact Group Co-Chairs François Pythoud (Switzerland) and Consolata Kiragu (Kenya); delegates from Canada during the afternoon session of the contact group with Davidson Campbell, Sophie Galarneau, Andrew Hurst, Sophie Bernier, and Michel Provencher.



In the afternoon, the contact group addressed national measures on PIC and MAT, with some developed countries highlighting voluntary guidelines and codes of conduct to guide users in complying with the Bonn Guidelines and PIC, as well as capacity building, awareness raising and stakeholder development. Above photos L-R: Henrique Choer (Brazil); Moriyasu Satoshi (Japan); Dominic Keating (US) and Yoke Ling Chee (Third World Network)



Above photos L-R: Marie Kraus-Wollheim (Switzerland); Geoff Burton (Australia) and David Hafashimana (Uganda)

GALLERY OF ENB READERS:

Above photos L-R: CBD Executive Secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf; Modibo Cissé (Mali); Renata de Ponte and Oliviero Montanaro (Italy); Claudio Gutierrez (Argentina) and David Cunningham (Australia)