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The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources
for Food and Agriculture
The
International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
(the Treaty) was adopted by the FAO Conference in
November 2001 and entered into force on 29 June
2004, ninety days after its ratification by 40
countries. As of November 2006, 110 countries and
the European Community are Contracting Parties to
the Treaty. The first Meeting of the Governing Body
was held in Spain in June 2006.
Find out more:
Importance of the
Treaty
The Treaty is of vital importance to plant genetic
resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) and
ultimately for food security. Its importance lies in
the fact that it allows for the continued flow of
the PGRFA most critical to the world’s food security
and for which countries are most interdependent. The
Treaty also provides a comprehensive framework for
the conservation and sustainable use of all PGRFA.
The Treaty, which took over seven years to be
negotiated within the framework of the
FAO Commission on Genetic
Resources for Food and Agriculture,
is designed to be in harmony with the
Convention on Biological
Diversity. The Convention, which
came into force in 1993, deals generally with all
aspects of the conservation and sustainable use of
the world’s genetic resources. The Treaty, however,
is designed to be responsive to the special nature
and needs of PGRFA. What then are these
characteristics that call for special treatment
through the new Treaty?
Firstly, PGRFA of cultivated crops, on which humans
depend for food and survival, are a form of
biodiversity that is a product of human activity and
that, for the most part, cannot exist without
continued human intervention. Over the millennia,
farmers have domesticated wild plants and, through a
process of selection and breeding, made them
suitable for modern agriculture. This has been done
by breeding out natural traits, such as seed
dormancy or shattering
of seed-heads prior to maturity,
that allow those plants to survive in the wild. It
has also been done by breeding in new traits such as
higher yields and drought or disease resistance.
Secondly, PGRFA have, for centuries, been freely and
widely exchanged across the world’s continents and
regions. Potatoes originated in the Andes mountains
of Latin America; barley and wheat were first
domesticated in the Near East; rice originated in
South-East Asia. All of these crops are now staples
cultivated throughout the world. The exchange of
PGRFA has continued over the ages, and almost all
countries in the world are now heavily
interdependent on PGRFA from other parts of the
world for their agricultural economies.
Finally, continued access to PGRFA is essential to
preserve the world’s food security. Farmers and
breeders depend on PGRFA as building blocks for the
improvement of their crops in order to sustain
production in the face of threats. On many
occasions, breeders have had to go back to the
centres of origin and diversity of crops in order to
find natural resistance to disease or other
environmental challenges. Potato blight caused by
Phytophthera infestans that resulted in the
Irish potato famine of the 1840s is a prime example.
Natural resistance to the disease had to be sought
in the centre of origin of the potato in South
America, in order to save Europe’s potato harvests.
A more recent example is taro leaf blight, which
threatened one of the staple food crops of Samoa.
Samoa had to look to Palau and the Philippines to
find blight resistant stock.
The Convention on Biological Diversity took great
steps forward in protecting the world’s biodiversity and
ensuring equitable regimes of access and
benefit-sharing. However, on its own it was not able
to respond fully to the special situation of PGRFA.
In particular, the increasing tendency seen towards
the end of the 20th Century towards
negotiating access to genetic resources on a
case-by-case bilateral basis, with consequent high
transaction costs, threatened to stifle the
continued exchange of the PGRFA on which
agricultural development depends.
Moreover, the CBD does not cover ex situ
collections, such as those held by the CGIAR Centres,
that were acquired before it came into force. Hence
the need for a new Treaty, within which terms for
access and benefit-sharing for the PGRFA most
important for food security could be mutually agreed
on a multilateral basis. Both FAO and the Conference
of Parties to the CBD have welcomed the Treaty as
providing a special solution for PGRFA that is
responsive to the needs of farmers, breeders and
sustainable agriculture in general.
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What the Treaty
achieves
The Treaty establishes a Multilateral System of
Access and Benefit-sharing for PGRFA of crops
important for food security as well as for the
interdependence of countries on them. These are
listed in Annex I to the Treaty. Access to these
PGRFA is facilitated in accordance with detailed
terms and conditions set out in the Treaty. Access
is provided through a Standard Material Transfer
Agreement drawn up by the Governing Body of the
Treaty.
Sharing of monetary and other benefits is on a
multilateral basis and includes the payment of an
equitable share of the benefits arising from
commercialization of products incorporating material
received from the Multilateral System. At its first
meeting in June 2006, the Governing Body adopted the
Standard
Material Transfer Agreement and
set the rates of benefit-sharing payment. Such
payments will be mandatory where restrictions are
placed on the availability of the products to others
for further research and breeding, as may be the
case for some types of patents. Where the product
continues to be available without such a
restriction, the payment will be voluntary, although
encouraged. Proceeds will be paid into a
multilateral fund or other mechanism and will flow,
directly and indirectly, to farmers, especially those
in developing countries and countries with economies
in transition that conserve and sustainably utilize
PGRFA.
The general provisions of the Treaty provide a
framework for the conservation and sustainable use
of PGRFA. The Treaty also recognizes as supporting
components the
Global Plan of Action for the
Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of PGRFA,
the collections held by the CGIAR Centres and other
international organizations, international plant
genetic resources networks, and a global information
system. At its first meeting in June 2006, the
Governing Body of the Treaty adopted
model agreements
with the CGIAR Centres and other international
institutions to bring their in-trust collections
within the purview of the Treaty (see more about the
agreements in next section below). It also signed a
relationship agreement with the
Global Crop Diversity Trust
recognizing the Trust as an essential element of the
Funding Strategy of the Treaty.
Agreements between the
Centres and the Governing Body of the Treaty
Article 15
of the International Treaty states the "Contracting
Parties call upon the IARCs [of the CGIAR] to sign
agreements with the Governing Body," to place their
collections under the auspices of the Treaty. In
June 2006, the Governing Body of the Treaty adopted
a generic agreement to be used for this purpose. On
October 16, 2006 - World Food Day -- the eleven
CGIAR Centres with ex situ collections of
PGRFA signed the
agreements.
At the same time, the Centres issued a
statement
setting out their understanding of some of the terms
of the agreements.
See also:
Find out more about the
in-trust collections.
Find out
more about
MTAs. |
