Enhancing Capacity to Access Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing
To build and enhance capacity of lawyers and governments officials in East Africa and particularly in the Albertine Rift, UNEP, in cooperation with the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) convened training workshops on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, with specific focus on a cluster of biodiversity-related MEAs including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the International treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, and other relevant international agreements. This project has been done in collaboration with local partners and East African institutions, such as the Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team (LEAT) in Tanzania, and the Advocate Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) in Uganda.
The project has provided training for around 60 East African lawyers on the legal regime on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, highlighting issues such as the establishment of the access and benefit-sharing (ABS) regime, understanding of the existing legal and policy frameworks on ABS, reasons for non compliance and strategies for effective implementations and policy/political issues related to sub-regional collaboration, coordination and harmonization. Also, country case studies commissioned from each of the Albertine Rift countries have been presented and discussed.
List of activities
The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in partnership with UNEP convened:
- A workshop for drafting contracts for sharing genetic resources, held in collaboration with Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) in Jinja, Uganda (April, 2005)
- A workshop on “Access and Benefit Sharing of Genetic Resources in the Albertine Rift”, held in collaboration with the Lawyers and Environmental Action Team (LEAT) in Arusha, Tanzania (May 2005)
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