Upcoming Brazilian and French ABS laws

France:

The French National Assembly voted on March 18th the new law with regards to biodiversity and reflecting the Nagoya Protocol implementation in France. This law ratifies the creations of the new French Agency for Biodiversity (AFB). This agency will be responsible for the implementation of the respecting law and therefore will be the main contact with regards to the articles reflecting the Nagoya Protocol. It will, among others, issue permit to access biodiversity, it will negotiate monetary benefit sharing and validate inquiries.

Next step the text should be presented to the Sénat in the coming months. Read more here.

Brazil:

At the same time Brazil was debating on their revised law. All participants from research institutes, indigenous people representatives, private sector and regulators agreed on criticizing the current law (MP 2186/2001) in force which is very bureaucratic and responsible for putting a lot of institutions illegal to the current law.

During the debate, Maria Smith from the FUNAI – indigenous people representative – criticized that few dialogue opportunities have been created for full participation of indigenous people. In addition, several Indigenous people, smallholders representatives mentioned that the revised law presents lack of monitoring and control of access to genetic resources and might allow debt forgiveness for those who broke the law.

On the other hand the private sector appreciates that the law facilitate the access process and the new governance model involving all stakeholders (institutions, private sectors, smallholders, indigenous people, regulators, etc.).

Few participants mentioned that the genetic resources should be accessed through a partnership between foreign companies and Brazilian research institutes. Read more here.

Read more on the law under development here.