The Plant Treaty and farmers’ rights: implementation issues for South Asia
This paper demonstrates the importance of harmonising other international agreements with the Plant Treaty. In this sense, the author believes that the International Regime on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will not affect the maintenance of crop genetic resources negatively.
The document firstly states that the Plant Treaty does not solve all problems, and there are still a lot of challenges related to ABS implementation that need to be addressed. Correspondingly, the paper emphasises that the realisation of farmers’ rights is crucial to the implementation of the Plant Treaty and to the management of crop genetic resources in general.
The paper presents the following recommendations for better implementation of the Plant Treaty:
- ensure that the country has taken the needed steps to comply with the multilateral system of ABS under the Plant Treaty
- ensure that the currently negotiated ABS system takes into account the specific requirements for conducive management of crop genetic resources that guarantees further conservation and sustainable use of the crop species
- ensure that sufficient legal space is provided for the conservation and sustainable use of crop genetic resources in seed laws, certification rules and intellectual property rights legislation
- ensure broad participation of stakeholders, particularly farmers in decision making processes, and extend support to their organisations so that they are able to develop awareness and capacity
- governments and organisations should submit their views on, and experiences with, the implementation of farmers’ rights to the Governing Body of the Plant Treaty so that measures needed to implement farmers' rights are identified
- identify the most efficient and effective ways to share the benefits from the multilateral system with farmers in developing countries, and provide recommendations for actions to the Governing Body of the Treaty.
