Marking 10 years of the International Treaty (full report)

'A promising start but more to be done’ – this was the general consensus agreed at an international event held in Rome yesterday to mark 10 years of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

The International Treaty was adopted by the FAO Conference in November 2001 and came into force in 2004. It is a powerful legal instrument that defines the legal status and conditions for pooling, exchanging and conserving plant genetic resources for food and agriculture between countries.  

Plant genetic resources are important as they are the raw materials needed by farmers, scientists, and breeders to help achieve food security in the face of climate change, land and water scarcity and an increasing population. 

As no single country has all the genetic diversity it needs and is dependent on others, this has created a need for a global pool of agricultural biodiversity that we can all share.

Since its adoption, the Treaty has been ratified by 127 countries, and includes at least 1.5 million plant samples of 64 crops and forages which FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf described as: “the basis for more than 80 percent of the world's food derived from plants and possibly our most important tool for adapting agriculture to climate change in the years to come.”

Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International, speaking at the event on behalf of the CGIAR Consortium (see video above), said: “We are convinced that the Treaty is the key for everyone around the world to work together to sustainably use and conserve plant genetic resources for food and agriculture” and called for greater collaboration between countries and international organizations to ensure that as much plant genetic diversity for use in food and agriculture is conserved and equitably used by the global community in pursuit of food security and environmental sustainability.

The CGIAR has played an important role throughout the negotiations of the Treaty, providing technical inputs and is one of the key resources for accessing genetic biodiversity.  CGIAR genebanks host around 50% of the materials that are currently confirmed as being in the multilateral system of access and benefit sharing, collections that include a wide diversity of local and traditional varieties and wild relatives of both major crops such as those listed in Annex 1 of the Treaty, and neglected and underutilized crops as well.  The materials held ‘in trust’ in the CGIAR genebanks are made available through the Treaty’s Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA). More than 8000 samples a week are exchanged through an SMTA.

Participants agreed that more needs to be done to achieve a wider implementation of the Treaty. This includes more policy research, support for capacity building for countries in implementing the Treaty, identifying a wider range of funding streams to assist in implementation, and developing a mechanism for improved dialogue between different partners including countries, civil society organizations, private sector and smallholder farmers, as well as increasing the number of countries that have ratified the Treaty.

There was also a surprising amount of convergence among participants that it might soon be time for the Governing Body to consider the possibility of expanding the scope of the Annex 1 list. 

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