Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 15 • 2nd September 2005
Drafting Begins of Transfer Agreement for Genetic Resources
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A Contact Group established by the Interim Committee of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) at their 18-22 July meeting in Hammamet, Tunisia, agreed on the outline of the standard contract for access to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. The contract, known as the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA), is the key tool of the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s ITPGRFA (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 2 April 2004) http://www.ictsd.org/biores/04-04-02/inbrief.htm. The treaty, which entered into force in June 2004, establishes a Multilateral System that aims to facilitate access and benefit-sharing with regard to PGRFA. The SMTA will set minimum standards for access to the 64 crops covered by the Treaty. The meeting set out the basic structure of the SMTA and made substantial progress in formulating detailed provisions, obligations and definitions regarding access and benefit-sharing. Much of this text remains to be agreed, and some areas may prove controversial, including: whether arbitration will be binding or non-binding, the role of the Governing Body of the ITPGRFA, and the threshold and method of payment into the Multilateral System. However, participants expressed hope that the momentum established by the first meeting would continue, even to the extent of completing the draft at the next meeting of the Contact Group in late 2005 or early 2006. In order to facilitate this, Switzerland may hold informal sessions prior to the next meeting. The draft will go to the Governing Body of the ITPGRFA for adoption at its next meeting in June 2006.
ICTSD Reporting; “First draft of ITPGRFA’s MTA negotiated”, PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES NEWS FROM THE PACIFIC, 29 July 2005.
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