On March 26th, the former minister of Ecology presented the French project regulation to the Ministry Council. On June 10th, the new Minister presented it to the National Assembly, which gives a start to the formal process of approving a new legislation.
This new legislation plans to create a new National Agency for Biodiversity and, for our particular interest, details how benefits could be shared while using biodiversity, following the Nagoya Protocol and the EU regulation, among other issues.
However, it is interesting to note that the proposed legislation is not necessarily found well structured. According to the reporter of the National committee for sustainable development, Mrs Geneviève Gaillard, some key partners are missing in the Board of Director of the new agency, such as the National Organisation on Forests (ONF), overseas territories (DOM-TOM), while we now that used biodiversity mainly comes from forests and overseas territories that represent almost 80% of the French biodiversity.
Read more about this here.
Nevertheless, in relation to businesses, the best way to work towards ABS implementation, is to work following best practices. As an example, the work done by the Union for Ethical BioTrade and its members is a great and interesting initiative related to ABS implementation by the private sector.