The Nagoya Protocol and what it means for the EU

The Nagoya Protocol implements an objective of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which aims to provide an international framework for safeguarding the conservation and sustainability of biodiversity, and in particular genetic resources. The protocol requires that, if a genetic resource, or traditional knowledge (TK) associated with such a resource, is used, consent must be received from the country in which it is found and from any local community that claims custodianship over it. In the rest of this article, we shall refer just to the genetic resource, but it should be understood that TK may be involved as well. The user of the genetic resource must also provide fair compensation based on any benefit that it has received from the genetic resource. This is generally referred to as access and benefit sharing (ABS).