The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization is a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Adopted in 2010 and in force since October 2014, it requires parties to set rules so that genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge are accessed only with prior informed consent and on mutually agreed terms, including benefit-sharing.
In practice
For plant genetics, Nagoya means that collecting seed from a country for breeding or research can require permission from that country's authorities, and from local or indigenous communities where their knowledge or resources are involved, plus an agreement on how benefits will be shared. Not every country is a party, and cannabis's controlled status adds separate legal barriers to collection and export.
The protocol is the legal backbone of the distinction between responsible landrace collection and biopiracy. See landrace hunting and biopiracy.
Rules differ by country, state, province and city, and change often. This is a general definition, not legal advice: check local rules.
Don't confuse with
- UPOV: breeders' rights, not access and benefit-sharing.
- The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: a related system for listed food and forage crops.
Germplasm is living genetic material (seeds, pollen, tissue or plants) kept for breeding, research or conservation, representing the genetic diversity of a crop.Prior informed consent is permission given in advance, with full information about intended use, by a country or community before its genetic resources or knowledge are accessed.Benefit-sharing is returning a fair share of the benefits from using genetic resources or traditional knowledge, money, credit, access or support, to the people who provided them.A landrace is a traditional, locally adapted cannabis population kept by farmers in one region over many generations, with its own type and plenty of internal variation.Biopiracy is taking genetic resources or traditional knowledge from a country or community without consent or benefit-sharing, especially to patent or profit from them.UPOV is the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants and its convention, the treaty framework most national plant breeders' rights laws follow.Plant variety protection (plant breeders' rights) is an intellectual property right for a new plant variety that is distinct, uniform and stable, typically 20-25 years.A landrace hunter travels to cannabis-growing regions to collect seed from local farmer populations, ideally with consent, credit and benefit-sharing for source communities.
