India seeks continued funding of ICRISAT Genebank, ‘Plant Treaty’ issues take centrestage

On 3rd day of the 9th Session of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the Ninth Governing Body (GB9) held deliberations on following most significant issues of Plant Treaty.

The GB9 finalised a resolution on “Celebrating the Guardians of Crop Diversity” to recognise the role of communities, farmer-conservers and women as “Guardians of Crop Diversity” in conservation and continued availability of crop diversity.

GB-9 established a ‘Contact Group’ to guide a draft process for re-starting the negotiations which broke down during the GB-8 on package of measures to enhance the functioning of the MLS of Plant Treaty. Delegates of GB-9 held the first informal meeting of the Contact Group to take the agenda forward in the plenary discussion.

Under Agenda 17 for consideration of Digital Sequence Information (DSI) discussed in the GB9 (Ninth Governing Body) Meeting, India endorsed the need for continuation of technical deliberations to provide clarity of definition, scope, jurisdiction, nature of implementation and access and benefit sharing mechanisms for fulfilling the objectives of ITPGRFA.

India demanded that GB-9 deliberate on the issue of continued funding of ICRISAT Genebank. India argued that DSI issue should be resolved without compromising on the discussions on multilateral system enhancement and ITPGRFA should not wait for Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to resolve DSI issue, since ITPGRFA deliberations are relatively ahead in content, delineated in scope and easy to implement. 

On 3rd day of the 9th Session