Developing Community Biodiversity Registries and Biocultural Community Protocols (BCP): tools for implementing Farmers' Rights as set out in Article 9 of the ITPGRFA and strengthening community capacity to manage crop genetic diversity

Starting in 2015, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MAEP) and Service d’Appui à la Gestion de l’Environnement (SAGE) in Madagascar and the Institut National des Recherches Agricoles du Benin (INRAB) together with the NGO Cercle de Sauvegarde des Ressources Naturelles (CeSaReN) for Benin, with support of Bioversity International and the Darwin Initiative, implemented a project to facilitate the mutually supportive implementation of the ITPGRFA and Nagoya Protocol. The ABS Capacity Development Initiative, the Secretariats of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the ITPGRFA; the African Union Commission and the regional NGO Natural Justice were also involved as partners. At the national level, the focus was on creating and adopting legal instruments. At the local level, communities were supported to create Community Biodiversity Registries as a useful tool to identify, document and monitor the existing biodiversity in their surroundings, along with associated traditional knowledge; Biocultural Community Protocols were then developed to enable local communities to take advantage of their countries’ commitments under both the ITPGRFA and the Nagoya Protocol by establishing mechanisms to regulate access to genetic resources in their territories and to establish the terms and conditions for access to and use of their traditional knowledge and resources.