Highlights

• Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), of which India is signatory, is hindering biodiversity research and preventing international collaborations due to regulations that have risen due to its implementation.
• The CBD is aimed at conserving biological diversity, sustainably using biological components and fair and equitable sharing of benefits (with local or indigenous communities) that may arise out of the utilisation of genetic resources.
• But this has generated “unintended consequences” for research; due to national-level legislations instituted by countries under the CBD, obtaining field permits for access to specimens for non-commercial research has become increasingly difficult, write the authors.
• However, we should not see regulation as restriction, said a source in India’s National Biodiversity Authority (which primarily implements provisions of access and benefit sharing of India’s biological resources).

• Under government-approved international collaborative projects, material can be exchanged freely; there are also “facilitative processes” to send specimens for taxonomic identification to other countries

Source:The Hindu