Highlights and images for 20 February 2019

Summary

Highlights for Wednesday, 20 February 2019

A photography exhibition titled 'Guardians of Seeds' highlights the important role that subsistence farmers play in maintaining biodiversity while ensuring food security

On Wednesday, delegates continued their deliberations on plant, forest, animal and micro-organism and invertebrate genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA).Highlights of the day included:

A debate on the implications of seed policies and regulations for on-farm conservation;

A discussion on a proposed guide for the implementation of genebank standards for plant GRFA;

A review of the implementation the Global Plan of Action on Forest Genetic Resources (GPA-FGR);

An update on the preparation of the second report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources (SOW-AnGR);

Discussions on guidelines for sustainable livestock value chains and methods for valuing ecosystem services provided by livestock; and

An initial discussion on future work on micro-organisms and invertebrate GRFA.

In contact groups, delegates also continued discussions on follow-up to the report on the State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture (SOW-BFA), access and benefit-sharing (ABS) and “digital sequence information” (DSI) on GRFA.For more details on the day's events and to hear what delegates said in the corridors, see our daily Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).

IISD Reporting Services, through its Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) Meeting Coverage, provided daily web coverage, daily reports, and a summary and analysis report from the 17th Session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The summary and analysis report is now available in HTML and PDF.

Photos by IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth

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