Fields of intervention
In accordance with the Ivorian partners, the focus is currently on the valorisation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge of the country. The ABS Initiative offers its support to the same stakeholders to
- mainstream ABS in the policies, strategies and action plans of various ministries and other stakeholders,
- collaborate in multi-stakeholders processes, and
- integrate and capacitate the indigenous peoples and local communities in valorising their resources.
Support for the negotiation of ABS agreements and the involvement of local communities in this will be provided based on expressed needs by the partners.
Activities
Activities started with an assessment mission in June 2019 and will continue until the end of the ABS Initiative’s current phase in March 2022.
Major achievements
- A national ABS-specific work plan has been developed and validated. Several meetings of the National ABS Ad-Hoc- Committee have been facilitated in order to tackle specific issues related to the elaboration and the validation of an interministerial decree.
- The draft of the interministerial decree as well as four accompanying by-laws have been finalized and are about to be approved by the Parliament of the Côte d’Ivoire.
- Various meetings with stakeholder groups from government, academia, private sector and communities have been held to inform the players about ABS procedures and requirements but also to discuss the needs and challenges of those players when implementing ABS.
- 36 local facilitators have been trained on the national ABS system and brought forward their knowledge to communities in the North-East of the country. The buy-in and support of the administrative and traditional authorities has been achieved.
- A visualisation of the envisaged Ivorian ABS procedure is ongoing.
- The Competent National Authority (CNA) has been supported in the analysis of several pending access demands as well as in the related correspondence with the interested users.
- The mainstreaming of ABS into other policies, strategies and action plans of ministries and stakeholders has been initiated.
While an initial version of the interministerial draft decree had been in circulation when the ABS Initiative started working in Côte d’Ivoire in mid-2019, a change of several Ministers prompted a revision of the text. This revision included further work to make sure the decree is fully aligned with the Nagoya Protocol. Comments to the draft decree provided by the legal experts of the ABS Initiative were discussed amongst the relevant stakeholders. At the same time, the ABS Initiative supported the elaboration of accompanying documents such as a visualisation of the foreseen ABS procedure, an access demand form, a declaration form for non-commercial access and a receipt for the declaration procedure.
The decree is envisaged to be adopted by the National Parliament this year (2024), together with the by-laws ("arrêtés"), which have been supported by the ABS Initiative, too.
Access requests have been sent to the CNA and the Ivorian Nation ABS Ad Hoc Committee has analysed several access demands. The National Focal Point has been in contact with the respective users. To date, two permits have been granted by the CNA.