The first internationally recognized certificate of compliance is issued under the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing

Montreal, October 2015 – The first internationally recognized certificate of compliance was issued on 1 October 2015, following a permit made available to the Access and Benefit-sharing (ABS) Clearing-House by India.

Under the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, Parties are to issue a permit or its equivalent at the time of access as evidence that access to genetic resources was based on prior informed consent and that mutually agreed terms were established. Parties are required by the Nagoya Protocol to make information on the permit or its equivalent, available to the ABS Clearing-House for the constitution of the internationally recognized certificate of compliance.

The permit was issued by India’s National Biodiversity Authority, the competent national authority under the Nagoya Protocol. The certificate then constituted through the ABS Clearing-House serves as evidence of the decision by India to grant access to ethno-medicinal knowledge of the Siddi community from Gujarat to a researcher affiliated with the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. The researcher can now demonstrate that s/he has respected the ABS requirements of India when using this knowledge.

“Last week was an important week for the Nagoya Protocol,” said Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. “In addition to having the first internationally recognized certificate of compliance published in the ABS Clearing-House, two additional countries joined the Protocol: the Philippines and Djibouti, which brings the total number of ratifications to 68.”

“The internationally recognized certificate of compliance is one of the major innovations of the Nagoya Protocol and one of the cornerstones of the access and benefit-sharing system,” added Mr. Dias. “The constitution of the first certificate represents a major step towards making the Nagoya Protocol operational. I congratulate the Government of India, and invite others to follow this example and to publish information on their national permits in the ABS Clearing-House. The Secretariat is here to assist you and provide the necessary technical support.”

The ABS-Clearing-House is accessible at: https://absch.cbd.int/