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Nordic Ministers Updated on Expert Report About Genetic Resources

Date: 2023.06.22

This week, NordGen was attending the annual summer meeting of the Nordic ministers for forestry, agriculture, fisheries and food. The politicians’ agenda was closely connected to current global crises and the green transition. Among other things, they were informed about a new report on access and rights to genetic resources.

Food waste, resilience in the bio economy and a roundtable conversation about sustainable food systems were some of the issues that ministers from all the Nordic countries and autonomous territories discussed at the meeting. One of the agenda points focused on the report Access and Rights to Genetic Resources: A Nordic Approach (II). It is a report that has been developed after several seminars with experts on different sectors of genetic resources.

Lise Lykke Steffensen, Executive Director, NordGen.

“The report presents a Nordic joint view on how access to genetic resources in the Nordic region should be secured and how the benefits derived from them are to be shared. These are internationally important matters that we need to handle in order to stop the loss of biodiversity happening right now,” says Lise Lykke Steffensen, Executive Director of NordGen.

Important Contribution

The main messages of the report were presented for the Nordic ministers that will now look into a ministerial declaration on the matter. The last ministerial declaration in the area came in 2003 and since then a lot has happened, both technically and in international cooperation. The report presented to the ministers also covers more areas of genetic resources than the last time the issue was before the ministers. The report is an important contribution to the goals and targets of the global biodiversity framework which was adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in the end of last year.

“To our knowledge, it is thus far only the Nordic countries that have presented a joint border-crossing view on the issue of access and sharing of genetic resources. We assume that the report will generate a large international interest,” says Lise Lykke Steffensen.

The report will also be presented at international foras in Rome in July (CGRFA*) and November (ITPGRFA*) as well as on the next big meeting of the CBD in Turkey next year.

*CGRFA: Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

*ITPGRFA: International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture