Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of fora dealing with IP issues. From food security to climate change and access to medicines, IP has become a cross cutting issue with important public policy implications. As a result global IP negotiations have significantly gained in complexity. Countries, particularly developing ones, are faced with numerous challenges such as coalition building, articulating coherent national positions to address complex issues and coordinating these positions across different fora. How do countries achieve this? What are the practical difficulties facing country negotiators in global IP negotiations?
On the other hand, academics and experts play and can play an important role in providing empirical research and inputs to better inform global IP negotiations. From the debate on patents and public health to the WIPO Development Agenda, contributions by leading IP academics have played an important role in advancing international discussions on these issues. In this context, how can IP teachers, particularly from developing countries,  contribute towards addressing the most salient issues and challenges facing global IP negotiations and the achievement of more balanced and development friendly global IP system?
These are some of the questions that are to be raised in this dialogue which brings together a group of IP teachers, mainly  from developing countries, with a group of Geneva based IP negotiators.  

Programme
_______

12h15    Welcome Remarks and Introduction, Pedro Roffe - Senior Fellow, ICTSD
 
12h20    Dynamics of IP negotiations in Geneva                
Mohamed Gad- Permanent Mission of Egypt 

12h35    Coordination and Coherence in Global IP Negotiations 

a) The experience of the European Union

           Sergio Balibrea – EU Delegation     
        
b) The experience of Brazil

            Jose Estanislau do Amaral – Permanent Mission of Brazil
 
13h00   Challenges facing Small Size Delegations in Global IP negotiations    
          
Makiese kinkela Augusto – Permanent Mission of Angola

Edouard Bizumuremyi – Permanent Mission of Rwanda

13h15    Open Discussion and Exchange of Views

13h40    Concluding Remarks - Ahmed Abdel Latif, IP Programme Manager- ICTSD
                                                         ________

The purpose of the dialogue is to present recent developments and research relating to and their implications on public health.
 
Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements between developed and developing countries. Many of these agreements include IP provisions (often referred to as “TRIPS-plus” standards), that go beyond the minimum standards established by the TRIPS Agreement and may affect the ability of developing countries to use the flexibilities contained in the Agreement for the purpose of protecting public health and promoting affordable access to medicines.
 
What are the main features of these IP provisions? What is their impact on the price of medicines and public health as shown by recent empirical research? How can governments deal with these provisions when negotiating bilateral and regional agreements and implementing them? These are some of the questions that will be discussed at the dialogue.
 
 

By Dominique Foray
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
___
Technology transfer to developing countries has been discussed by the international community for more than three decades. Today, the relationship between technology transfer and intellectual property stands high in the deliberations of the Council for TRIPS, in the discussions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in the implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda recommendations adopted in 2007.
Technology Transfer in the TRIPS Age: The Need for New Types of Partnerships between the Least Developed and Most Advanced Economies (Issue Paper 23) by Dominique Foray (http://ictsd.net/i/publications/50415/) is a recent contribution of the ICTSD Programme on Intellectual Property Rights and Sustainable Development to this ongoing debate. It focuses, in particular, on technology transfer to the least developed economies.
According to the paper, many countries are increasing their exposure to foreign technologies by means of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), while improving absorptive capacities to facilitate the dissemination of technologies and spillovers within the domestic economy. This represents a virtuous path that a number of developing countries – notably middle-income countries – follow. The experience of LDCs, however, is less promising. FDI and trade remain at a low level and their limited absorptive capacities makes it unlikely that the few foreign technologies that are transferred will disseminate throughout the economy.
The paper makes practical recommendations, applicable, first, to least developed countries (LDCs), that want to use technology transfer as an effective growth engine, and, second, to developed countries that have to comply with Article 66.2 of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
With respect to TRIPS Article 66.2 obligations, the study suggests that transfer of technology should be part of a principal economic operation and not be a joint product or by-product, contingent on other operations. As far as additional incentives by governments are concerned, they should consist of assistance for projects that are socially beneficial but with low expected profitability for technology supplier firms. This should ensure that conditions for technology transfer involve the choice of relevant partners on both the supply and demand sides, selection of the right area related to a clearly expressed local demand for technology and the creation of organisational forms that favour the consolidation of the transfer (absorption, adaptation and subsequent spillover), as well as the related entrepreneurial dynamic.
In this context, the study advances the need for greater use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a mechanism for ensuring the effectiveness of the technology transfer operation.
A central objective of the ICTSD Programme on Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development has been to facilitate the emergence of a critical mass of well-informed stakeholders in developing countries – including decision makers and negotiators, but also within the private sector and civil society – who will be able to define their own sustainable human development objectives and effectively advance them at the national and international levels.
We hope you will find this paper a useful contribution to the debate on IP, innovation and sustainable development, and particularly in responding to the need for increased awareness and better understanding of the complexities of technology transfer and, among others, its interface with IP.
Dominique Foray is Chair in Economics and Management of Innovation, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Several proposals have been made by a number of countries that show an emerging willingness to deal with the substantive and practical aspects of the issues. At the same time, academics and experts in the field have produced valuable research material with practical suggestions on moving this debate forward. While these attempts demonstrate a general interest to advance on these matters, it has been difficult to find the common ground needed to make appropriate use of the opportunity offered by the Doha Mandate.

In light of this the Ministerial Conference at the end of the year in Hong Kong can offer a new space for negotiations to move this debate forward. To do so, however, much work will be needed during coming months in order to provide the necessary options and solutions for successful decision making. The aim of this dialogue is to support this process by highlighting and constructively discussing some of the potentially promising proposals made in the recent past.

Programme

Moderators: Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz (ICTSD) and Martha Chouchena-Rojas (IUCN)

Addressing the Disclosure Requirement at the International Level - the Role of the TRIPS Agreement?
Begona VENERO (Peruvian Patent Office)
Felix ADDOR (Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property)

How to Operationalise the Disclosure Requirement at the National level in a Manner Supportive of the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD?
Michael GOLLIN (Venable LLP)
N.S. GOPALAKRISHNAN (Cochin University of Science and Technology) (unavailable due to family ill-health)
David VIVAS-EUGUI (ICTSD)

The TRIPS World after Disclosure of Source and Evidence of Prior Informed Consent and Benefit Sharing
Graham DUTFIELD (Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute)
Atul KAUSHIK Indian Mission to the WTO.

Participants List

 

Speakers

Felix Addor is Chief Legal Officer and Deputy Director General of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, Ministry of Justice, Berne/Switzerland; Lecturer at the Law Faculty of the University of Berne, and at the Master of International Law and Economy Programme opf the World Trade Institute, Switzerland, for international negotiations and international intellectual property. He may be contacted at: felix.addor@ipi.ch.

Graham Dutfield is Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, University of London. He was formerly Academic Director of the UNCTAD-ICTSD Capacity-building Project on Intellectual Property Rights and Development. He has published widely on the relationship between intellectual property rights and health, agriculture, biotechnology, biodiversity, traditional knowledge and development.

Michael Gollin is a patent attorney and partner in Venable LLP, Washington DC (magollin@venable.com). He teaches Strategic Management of Intellectual Property at Georgetown business school. Mr. Gollin founded Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors (PIIPA), a global non-profit intellectual property resource for developing countries organizations. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences from Princeton University, a master’s degree in zoology and molecular biology from the University of Zurich, and a law degree from Boston University.

Dr. N. S. Gopalakrishnan is the Director of the School of Legal Studies, Cochin University of Science and Technology. Prior to joining Cochin University in 1997, he worked as the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Kannur University, Kerala, and as an Additional Professor in the National Law School of India University. He has published two books and a number of research articles in the area of Intellectual Property Laws including in the area of access and benefit sharing. He was an expert adviser to the Indian Delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on WIPO Treaties, 1996, and has served as a member of expert committees set up by the Government of India on IPR issues.

Atul Kaushik works with the Permanent Mission of India to the WTO in Geneva. He has science, law and management degrees, and has worked for more than two decades on international trade issues in the Government of India, with a focus on WTO issues, and in particular intellectual property, environment and dispute settlement in the last ten years.

Sélim Louafi is Research fellow at Iddri since 2001 in charge of the biodiversity programme of this Institute. He is a PhD fellow in Agricultural economy. Formerly, he was Research assistant at the Centre of Philosophy of Law at The Université Catholique de Louvain (2000-2001). He has worked on the different theories of governance applied on biodiversity negotiations. His current research projects are in the fields of access to genetic resources and traditional ecological knowledge. He is coordinating a collective book on the questions of the French experiences of protection of traditional ecological knowledge (to be published in end 2005).

Maria Julia Oliva has led CIEL’s work on intellectual property for over two years and is currently the Director of the Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development Project. She has written extensively on intellectual property and sustainable development issues and has represented CIEL in numerous intellectual property meetings and events. Ms. Oliva is also a Member of the Board of Directors of IP-Watch, a non-profit independent news service reporting on international intellectual property issues. She earned an LL.M. Degree in Environmental Law from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College, where she graduated cum laude a law degree at the University of Mendoza, in Argentina.

Brendan Tobin heads the Biodiplomacy Initiative at UNU-IAS. He is the co-founder of the Lima-based Association for the Defence of Natural Rights (ADN), and in 1997 was awarded an Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs for his work with indigenous people in Peru. Mr. Tobin has since the early 1990s been actively involved in international negotiations relating to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and has served as a member of the First Panel of Experts on Access and Benefit Sharing and as a member of the Peruvian national delegation to the Conference of the Parties to CBD, and the Working Groups on ABS and Article 8(j). He is the author of a number of articles on access and benefit sharing and traditional knowledge.

Begoña Aguirre Venero is Vice-President of the Intellectual Property Board of Appeals of the Peruvian National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI) since 1999. She also chairs the Peruvian National Commission against Biopiracy since august 2004. She was formerly Head of the Peruvian Patent Office. She received a Law Degree from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (Lima, Peru) and a Diploma on international studies on industrial property from the Centre d’études internationales de la propriété industrielle, Université Robert
Schuman (Strasbourg, France). She has participated as a member of the Peruvian Delegation in a number of meetings before WIPO and the CBD, and has written articles on intellectual property, protection of traditional knowledge and biopiracy.

David Vivas is Programme Manager of Intellectual Property, Technology and Services at ICTSD. He was Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL); Attaché for legal affairs at the Mission of Venezuela to the WTO; and consultant and writer for the WTO, UNCTAD, South Centre, ACICI, QUNO, Rockefeller Foundation, Venezuelan Institute of Foreign Trade and Ministry of Science and Technology of Venezuela. His work has focused on intellectual property, transfer of technology-related issues, trade in services and international economic and environmental negotiations. David Vivas has a legal background, and has
studied at the Universidad de Catolica Andresa Bello, Venezuela, Georgetown University in the United States and Universidad Externado, in Colombia.

Moderators

Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz is co-founder and first Executive Director of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, since 1996. He is the Vice-Chair of the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and the Chair of CEESP’s Group on Environment, Trade and Investment (GETI). He is also the co-founder and was a General Director of the Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano (1994-1996, Quito, Ecuador) and has served as a delegate and principal negotiator for Colombia, as a spokesman for the G-77, and as a counsultant for UNDTCP.

Martha Chouchena-Rojas heads the IUCN unit that leads the Union’s work on cross-sectoral agreements and processes, including the CBD, the UNCCC, the WTO and the follow up to the WSSD. She also coordinates IUCN’s work in the context of the United Nations system, as well as internal procedures for policy making throughout the Union. Prior to joining IUCN in 1994, she served as the Director of the National Parks of Colombia and represented the Colombian government in several MEAs. Other experience includes serving as the Program Coordinator for the FAO Tropical Forestry Action Plan in Colombia and as a FAO consultant for various protected areas management projects.

Participants

Marc Allain - WFF
Andrea Theiler - University of St. Gallen
Andreas Kotsakis - International Fund for Agricultural Development
D.R. Aqarwal - Institute of International Trade, India
P. Arhel - WTO
Lucas Rizzo Arrivillaga - ETH Zurich
Riad Baatia
Elmias T. Biadgleng - South Centre
Joshua Bishop - IUCN
Riccardo Bocci - Instituto Agronomico Per L’Oltremare
Marcel Burkart - University of St. Gallen
Claudio Chiarolla - QMU
Michelle Davey - Sidley Austin Brown & Wood
Carolyn Deere - Oxford University
Magali Fabre - 3D Three
Ernesto Fernandez - Mission of Costa Rica
Abril Frayre - Mission of Mexico
Francis Gagnon - CASIN
Otto Genee - MFA Netherlands
Martin Girsberger - Swiss IP Institute
Inger Gregersen - Mission of Norway
Ricardo Guilherme - WTI
Malte Hauschild - Mission of Germany
Pai-Yeh Ho - CIECA Chinese Taipei
Benjamin Hsu - Mission of Taiwan
Pai Jackson - Mission of Taiwan
Linga Kalinde - South Centre
Fernanda Kallas - Universite Paris II Pantheon Assas
Roger Kampf - WTO
Kanitha Kangsawanich - Mission of Thailand
Juergen Kuirsch - Greenpeace Germany
Jyoti Larke - Mission of australia
Yann Le Goater - Universite Paris II Pantheon Assas
Karen Lee Rata - WIPO
Chen-Wei Lin - NSC Chinese Taipei
Duncan Matthews - Queen Mary University of London
Wolf Meier-Ewert - WTO
Jean-Frederic Morin - IDDRI
Alejandro Neyra - Mission of Peru
Raquel Neyra - La Sorbonne
Prof. M.M. Pant - ICWWS, New Delhi
Paquin - UNISFERA
Sonia Pena - IUCN
Rachel Polaud - Institut Etudies Politiques, Grenoble
Aiste Ramanauskaite - Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly
Krishna Ravisrinna - South Centre
Ann-Mary Redmond - EC Commission
Pedro Roffe - ICTSD
Jon Santamauro - Mission of US
Eric Sayettout - Mission of France
Jaiylyn Shi - UNCTAD
Andrew Stevenson - ICTSD
Geoff Tansey - QUNO
Richard Tarasofsky - Chatham House
Tony Taubman - WIPO-OMPI
Guillaume Tell - Pomme Suisse
Urs P. Thomas - University of Geneva
Elisabeth Turk - UNCTAD DITC
Sophia Twarog - UNCTAD
A. Van den Hoven - UNICE
Kristof Volckaert
J. Watal - WTO
Martin Watson - QUNO
Elisabeth Wickeri - HRIC
Sebastian Winkler - IUCN
Connie Yang - NSC Chinese Taipei
Dimitrios Ziagas - University of London

 

ICTSD-UNCTAD Roundtable
ICTSD is proud to announce the launch of the UNCTAD - ICTSD Resource Book on TRIPS and Development, to be held on 7 April 2005 from 9h00 - 11h00 at the International Environmental House II, Rooms Rhin and Aare.

The Resource Book, published in February 2005 by Cambridge University Press, is conceived as a thorough guide to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It provides a detailed analysis of each provision of the Agreement, aiming at a sound understanding of WTO Members’ rights and obligations. The purpose is to clarify the implications of TRIPS, especially highlighting the areas in which the treaty leaves leeway to Members for the pursuit of their own policy objectives, according to their respective levels of development.

Programme

9.00 - 9.30:

Welcoming Remarks and presentation of the Resource Book
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Executive Director, ICTSD
Carlos Fortin, Officer-in-Charge, UNCTAD
Pedros Roffe, Project Director, ICTSD

9.30 - 10.30

Panel Discussion:
Guilherme Patriota, Permanent Mission of Brazil to the UN
Cameron MacKay, Permanent Mission of Canada to the UN
Adrian Otten, Director, Intellectual Property Division, WTO
Frederick Abbott, Professor, Florida State University College of Law
Carlos Correa, Professor, Universidad de Buenos Aires / South Centre

10.30 - 11.00:

Questions & Answers

Participants

Frederick Abbott, Professor, Florida State University College of Law
Christophe Bellmann, ICTSD
Johannes Bernabe, Permanent Mission of The Philippines to the WTO
Carlos Correa, Professor, Universidad de Buenos Aires / South Centre
Carolyn Deere, Intellectual Property Watch
Ragui El-Etreby Permanent Mission of Egypt
Carlos Fortin, Officer-in-Charge, UNCTAD
Hekmatollah Ghorbani, Permanent Mission of Iran
Khalil Hamdani, UNCTAD
Myrna Huggins, Permanent Mission of Trinidad and Tobago
Alejandro Jara, Permanent Mission of Chile
Atul Kaushnik, Permanent Mission of India
James Lankford, QUND
Bernice Lee, ICTSD
Jean-Cristophe Maur, DFID UK
Cameron Mckay, Permanent Mission of Canada
Giselle de Meléndez, University of Geneva
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Executive Director, ICTSD
Sisule Musungu, South Centre
Angelica Navarro, Permanent Mission of Bolivia
Alejandro Neyra, Permanent Mission of Peru
Maria Julia Oliva, CIEL
Adrian Otten, Director, Intellectual Property Division, WTO
Davinia Ovett, 3D
Guilherme Patriota, Permanent Mission of Brazil to the UN
Pedro Roffe, Project Director, ICTSD
Maximiliano Santa Cruz, Permanent Mission of Chile to the WTO
Dayaratna Silva, Permanent Mission, of Sri Lanka
David Vivas, ICTSD
Martin Watson, QUND

Despite progress, antiretroviral therapy coverage in low- and middle-income countries remains poor: only 31% of HIV-infected people in need were receiving treatment in 2007.  Obstacles inlude weak healthcare systems, a critical shortage of human resources and a lack of sustainable, long-term funding considering that health spending is still less than US$10 per person per year in most African countries, these obstacles act as key barriers in preventing poor people from obtaining life-saving drugs. Under this backcloth, out-of-reach prices still prevent HIV-infected people in most income-constrained countries from accessing brand antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).  In the meantime, evolutionary strategies by governments and generic companies in emerging south markets look like they would place a risk of failure on ARVs pricing policies of the multinational brand corporations.

This article explore an attuned model to allow the brand and generic maufacturers to appropriately tackle evolutionary trends in the emerging markets, while securing the poorest expanded access to fairly priced ARVs, either for the present or the future.

World Meteorological Organisation

Room C1

*Avenue de la Paix 7 bis, 1202 Geneva 

The objective of the roundtable was to examine options and challenges in the use of cross-retaliation in TRIPS and GATS with a view to enable developing countries to make effective use of it under the WTO Dispute Settlement system.
 
Professor Frederick M. Abbott and Dr. Arthur E. Appleton presented the findings of two studies, commissioned by ICTSD, in which they respectively investigate the legal, technical and economic problems raised in the use of cross-retaliation under TRIPS and GATS, and present possible solutions to these problems.
 
Background
Cross-retaliation refers to the suspension of concessions in a sector of trade different than the sector in which the trade injury is suffered, including under a different WTO agreement. The incorporation of the “new area” agreements of TRIPS and GATS, as a consequence of the Uruguay Round negotiations, introduced a more complex era in dispute settlement and retaliation. For many developing countries, suspension of concessions in TRIPS or GATS may represent a valuable alternative option when it is not practical or effective for them to rely on standard retaliation. This is often the case due to the unbalanced nature of trading relations and the asymmetry in economic power.
 
However, this option has rarely been used by developing countries. Thus, the complex legal and technical problems, as well as the economic consequences, of resorting to cross-retaliation under the TRIPS Agreement and the GATS need to be examined comprehensively, in order for developing countries to make effective use of this option.
 
Professor Abbott has investigated cross-retaliation under the TRIPS Agreement. He presents the range of legal options available to governments considering the suspension of concessions under the TRIPS Agreement particularly in terms of identifying the level of suspension and avoiding legal conflicts.
Dr. Appleton has identified and outlined options on how to implement cross- retaliation within the GATS. In this connection, he has examined Modes and sectors of service supply where cross retaliation would be legally and technically feasible while creating an incentive for the violating member to comply without causing harm to the economy of the retaliating member.
 
After the presentations, comments were made by a number of distinguished experts and delegates. An open discussion with the audience followed. (Programme attached). The two studies by Professor Abbott and Dr.  Appleton were made available at the meeting.

Members’ disagreements centred on a proposed amendment to the TRIPS Agreement, which would incorporate a ‘disclosure of origin’ requirement for biological resources (IP/C/W/474, available at http://docsonli.wto.org), as well as on whether intellectual property (IP) issues should be included in upcoming ‘horizontal’ negotiations on modalities in agricultural and non-agricultural market access within the Doha Round.

Disclosure on the agenda - again

As has been the practice in previous Council meetings, the agenda items on patenting, biodiversity and the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore had been scheduled to be discussed together. However, the debate focused on three subjects, only one of which was included in this framework. Continuing an ongoing informal dialogue (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 13 June 2008, http://www.ictsd.org/biores/08-06-13/inbrief.htm#1), delegates discussed the development of a register for geographical indications (GI), the extension of high-level protection to GIs other than wines and spirits, and the possibility of amending the TRIPS Agreement to include a disclosure of origin requirement in patent applications.

Disclosure turned out to be the most contentious issue at the meeting. Also considered in informal consultations chaired by WTO Deputy Director-General Rufus Yerxa, disagreement on the topic centred on the possibility of amending the TRIPS Agreement to bring it in line with commitments under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Specifically, the proposed amendment would require that patent applications disclose the origin of genetic material or traditional knowledge used in inventions. The current debate is over whether this amendment is the most effective way to stop the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge.

Consequently, the issue of ‘parallelism’ was raised. Parallelism refers to the question of whether all three of the IP issues in question - the GI register, its extension and disclosure - should be included in forthcoming horizontal negotiations on market opening in the agricultural and industrial sectors. Those in favour of parallelism want the negotiations to include all three IP issues, while those against it argue that more technical discussion and empirical evidence is required before moving to text-based negotiations. Those opposed further maintain that parallelism would substantially delay progress in the Doha negotiations.

Members’ positions remain unchanged

Proponents of disclosure and parallelism, which include Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the group of least developed countries (LDCs), Peru and Thailand, re-emphasised that the support extended to the disclosure proposal amounts to over two-thirds of the WTO Membership. They urged the Council to push forward and proceed with text-based negotiations.

The Philippines and South Africa spoke against parallelism but in favour of disclosure; Taiwan, while undecided on disclosure, opposed parallelism.

Sources report that critics of both parallelism and disclosure, which include Argentina, Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and the US, argued that disclosure is not the most effective way of dealing with misappropriation. Those delegations further maintained that including the three controversial IP issues with the other subjects would jeopardise the negotiations on agriculture and industrial products.

Korea, Singapore and the US reiterated that they did not believe that an amendment of the TRIPS Agreement constituted the most effective way to address Members’ concerns related to bio-piracy, referring to alternatives such as a database system proposed by Japan (IP/C/W/504 and IP/C/W/472). They maintained that further facts-oriented discussions in the Council were necessary on the issue.

Bolivia, on behalf of its indigenous peoples, declared that it was strongly opposed to the concept that natural resources could pertain to the domain of private property rights, and that patents did not constitute the appropriate means of protection.

With respect to enforcement, the EU repeated its view that sanctions for a violation of the disclosure of origin requirement should be sought outside of patent law, as a revocation of patents would endanger the viability of the patent system.

Members also discussed wither the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) should be granted observer status. Brazil, China, Ecuador and India expressed strong support for such as move. The Chair, Ambassador Gail Marie Mathurin (Jamaica) announced that immediate consultations on this matter would be held with the CBD Secretariat.

The meeting concluded with the announcement that a new chairperson will be sought, as the current chair will be taking on new duties in Jamaica.

ICTSD reporting.