TITLE: Biodiversity Act to benefit Bhutanese farmers AUTHOR: Gopilal Acharya PUBLICATION: Kuensel Online DATE: 12 August 2003 URL: http://www.kuenselonline.com/article.php?sid=3151 BIODIVERSITY ACT TO BENEFIT BHUTANESE FARMERS by Gopilal Acharya Kuensel Online, Timphu, 12 August 2003 The Biodiversity Act of Bhutan, 2003, which was endorsed by the 81st session of the National Assembly this week, will implement legal, administrative and policy measures to regulate access to genetic resources of the country. The Act asserts the sovereignty of the country over its genetic resources and the need to promote the conservation and sustainable use of the resources as well as the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of the resources. It will also prevent illegal access to genetic and biochemical resources and associated traditional knowledge, protect farmers' and breeders' rights, make plant varieties subject to property rights and promote access to foreign sources of improved plant varieties for Bhutanese farmers. The agriculture secretary, Dasho Sangay Thinley, said that the Biodiversity Act was extremely important in the Bhutanese context since Bhutan still had 72 percent of its forest cover intact. "The large forest coverage that we have contains most of the biodiversity." He added that Bhutan had great resources such as, forests, livestock, crops and farmers' traditional knowledge. "This Act will look into how these resources can be utilised for the benefit of the people. It will basically protect our farmers' interests" he said. The Act will recognise and protect traditional knowledge, innovation and local communities' practices associated with biodiversity; regulate and facilitate the process by which collectors may legally obtain genetic resources; and, promote technology transfer and capacity building at the national and local levels, including the building of a scientific and technological capacity relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Dasho Sangay Thinley said that protecting farmers' knowledge, referred to in the Act as traditional knowledge, was also very important. "Farmers' knowledge has its own identity," he said. "They are the owners of that knowledge which if they share with other countries will bring them benefits in terms of income." The Act states that access to genetic resources shall be subject to the prior informed consent of a competent authority of Bhutan, a body representing national interests and the interests of the local communities harbouring, cultivating, developing and maintaining the biodiversity concerned. The authorised agency will process the applications and decide whether to grant or refuse a permit and the applicant will be informed of the decision within 30 days of receipt of the application. If the access is granted, the authorised agency shall protect all the confidential information according to the Act and monitor the permits granted. The six-chapter Act also lays down the conditions for the grant of access, benefit sharing, and protection, talks about the various rights, offences, and penalties. "So far we have only been talking about conserving and protecting the biodiversity," said the outgoing agriculture minister, Lyonpo Kinzang Dorji. "Now we are talking about bio-prospecting it." The minister explained that bio-prospecting was a highly technical and sophisticated process for which Bhutan at present did not have the technical and scientific capacity. "At the same time we have a tremendous wealth of genetic resources which people would like to tap for economic and commercial benefits," he said. "We are hoping to get the expertise and technical know-how from the developed countries and here again the Act becomes very important." By Gopilal Acharya gopiacharya(at)kuensel.com.bt Copyright 2003 - Kuensel