2 August 2018: Germany published the first report on the utilization of genetic resources through the Access and Benefit-sharing (ABS) Clearing-House by issuing a checkpoint communiqué concerning research on ants from South Africa. Checkpoint communiqués from Malta and Qatar followed Germany’s communiqué.

The ABS Clearing-House is a global repository of information that helps provide legal certainty and transparency in the context of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The ABS Clearing-House, inter alia, enables countries to monitor how genetic resources are used along the value chain for commercial or non-commercial research, which is valuable especially when genetic resources have left the country.

The Nagoya Protocol monitoring system provides “an important tool for connecting users and providers of genetic resources.”

The checkpoint communiqués from Germany and Malta mark the first time the ABS interoperability functions were used to automatically publish information on the ABS Clearing-House: information published on EU’s DECLARE tool – an EU-wide tool that enables users of genetic resources to submit the required due diligence declarations – was automatically transferred and published on the ABS Clearing-House.

Using interoperability mechanisms like the application programming interface of the ABS Clearing-House supports Parties to the Nagoya Protocol in automating the publication of information on the Clearing-House.

Cristiana Paşca Palmer, CBD Executive Secretary, highlighted the monitoring system as “a key piece of the Nagoya Protocol,” which provides “an important tool for connecting users and providers of genetic resources.” In light of the recent ratifications of the Nagoya Protocol by Afghanistan, Austria, Central African Republic (CAR), and Palau, which brings the total number of ratifications to 109, she added that momentum is increasing in the implementation of the Protocol. [CBD Press Release]