A brief history of the Treaty

Until very recently, there were no international laws governing genetic resources per se. Farmers, plant breeders and conservationists exchanged seeds and plant propagating material without any rights or responsibilities imposed by international law. Open systems of access to plant genetic resources contributed to farmers and breeders being able to develop a wide diversity of crop varieties adapted to many different environments and climates, resistant to many different pests and diseases and suited to many different tastes and cultures. We owe our agricultural biodiversity to these patterns of use and exchange. Agricultural growth and innovation continues to depend upon it.

Given the manner in which crops and forages have developed and moved around the world, all countries are now highly interdependent on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA), that is to say, they rely on PGRFA that exists or was originally collected from within each others’ borders. Similarly, on a wider scale, sub-regions and even continents are interdependent on PGRFA. 

Recognizing the global importance of PGRFA, in 1983, the FAO General Assembly created the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources, and adopted the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a non-binding agreement that was the forerunner to the International Treaty. The International Undertaking envisaged the creation of an internationally coordinated network of ex situ collections of PGRFA. It also explicitly stated that PGRFA were the "common heritage" of humankind. Some countries declined to subscribe to the International Undertaking on the grounds that it did not recognize intellectual property rights. In 1989 and 1991 the FAO Council adopted resolutions interpreting the International Undertaking; they recognized UPOV-style intellectual property rights over plant varieties and national sovereignty over PGRFA.

In 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), came into force. It emphasizes states' sovereign rights over their natural resources and their "authority to determine access to genetic resources, subject to national legislation."
 
The CBD also establishes that states shall endeavour to create conditions to facilitate access to genetic resources, and that such access, when granted, should be subject to prior informed consent, and subject to mutually agreed terms. These are broad principles that can be implemented in a number of different ways. Most countries' efforts to implement the access and benefit-sharing provisions of the CBD have taken the form of creating bilaterally oriented access laws that require case-by-case negotiations to establish legal conditions for obtaining and using materials from a country.

Governments negotiating the CBD realized that there were still outstanding issues related to PGRFA that need to be addressed. To this end, Resolution 3 of the Nairobi Final Act, highlighted the need to seek solutions to outstanding matters concerning the global system of conservation and use under the FAO, and ex situ collections of PGRFA acquired before the CBD came into force.

Thereafter, following the lead established by the Nairobi Final Act, the FAO Council requested the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to host negotiations for a revision of the International Undertaking, taking into consideration the need to make it consistent with the CBD. Seven years of negotiations later, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was adopted by the FAO Council.

The Treaty came into force on 29 June 2004 and its Governing Body met for the first time in June 2006. As of August 2010, 132 Contracting Parties, including the European Union, had ratified the Treaty.

See also:

• The Treaty's multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing
• The Treaty and the CGIAR Centres