A first-of-its-kind national consultative workshop titled ‘Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing Law for Pakistan’ was recently held in Islamabad to develop action points in revising Pakistan’s draft biodiversity act and develop an Access Benefit Sharing (ABS) law in context of the Nagoya Protocol.
The 2-day workshop was jointly organised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Planning and Development Division’s Inspector General Forests (IGF). The meeting was attended by representatives from the government, herbal medicine sector and the academia.
The extensive agenda at the meeting focused on the certification of compliance, regulation of derivatives and traditional knowledge of genetic resources, development of an institutional framework for ABS law in Pakistan. The chief guest at the workshop was Adviser to Prime Minister on Climate Change and Sustainable Development Ishfaque Ahmad, who stressed upon safeguarding the diversity of Pakistan’s biological resources.
He also commended the efforts of IGF and IUCN in facilitating the finalisation of the draft law and reiterated that the matter was at a very high priority on governmental agenda. In his welcoming address, IGF Mahmood Nasir emphasised that the conservation of biological resources was mandatory for Pakistan since it is a party to the ‘Convention on Biological Diversity’.
The panel of speakers and facilitators at the workshop included Biodiversity Directorate Technical Officer Dr Maimoona Wali Khan, who gave an overview of the Nagoya Protocol. IUCN Environmental Law Asia Programme Head Patricia Moore briefed the participants on the existing draft of the Biodiversity Act and facilitated the discussion along with other IUCN experts for their views and inputs on the draft and raised questions relating to enforcement, capacity building, information sharing, regulation of commercial commodities and mechanisms for benefit sharing.
Legal expert on intellectual property Zulfiqar Khan facilitated the discussions on the protection of traditional knowledge while Hamdard University Faculty of Eastern Medicine’s Dr Aftab Saeed addressed the topic of regulation of derivatives. At the closing ceremony, chief guest Intellectual Property Organisation of Pakistan Chairman and former environment federal minister Hamidullah Jan Afridi commended the efforts made during the workshop in regulating the process of ABS in Pakistan.
