5 March 2018: With 41 Parties, the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety entered into force on 5 March 2018.

The Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress aims to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity by providing international rules and procedures in the field of liability and redress relating to living modified organisms (LMOs). It is a binding agreement, providing that States must require operators to take response measures in the event of damage resulting from LMOs which find their origin in a transboundary movement. Such measures may also be taken where there is a sufficient likelihood that damage will result if timely response measures are not taken. Parties may develop further civil liability rules in this regard. The Supplementary Protocol was adopted on 15 October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan.

On the occasion of its entry into force, Cristiana Paşca Palmer, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), urged all Parties to the Biosafety Protocol to ratify the Supplementary Protocol as soon as possible, and all parties that have not yet ratified the Biosafety Protocol to do so, in order to also become Parties to the Supplementary Protocol.

To date, 171 Parties have ratified the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which is a supplementary agreement to the CBD. [CBD Press Release] [Supplementary Protocol Webpage]