Côte d'Ivoire

Activities and Achievements

Fields of intervention

In accordance with the Ivorian partners, the focus is currently on the development of a legal framework for ABS in the form of an interministerial decree and the regulations that describe some of the application modalities of the decree. Support for the negotiation of ABS agreements and the involvement of local communities in this will be provided once the respective needs are communicated by the partner.

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.
  • Comments on the interministerial decree have been made available to the Ivorian stakeholders. The respective discussion and integration of comments have been done.
  • A visualization of the envisaged Ivorian ABS procedure is ongoing.
  • The ABS Initiative also supported the elaboration of relevant documents for the ABS decree, namely an access demand form, a declaration form for cases of non-commercial access as well as the respective receipt for the declaration procedure.  
  • 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.

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 visualization of the foreseen ABS procedure, an access demand form, a declaration form for non-commercial access and a receipt for the declaration procedure. The draft decree was to be finalized and validated in October 2020.

Currently, in the process of its adoption by the National Assembly, this second version of the interministerial draft decree has been submitted to the Minister of Environment for the round of signature by him and all the concerned Ministers.

The process to develop the "arrêtés" that describe some of the application modalities of the decree is still ongoing.

Access requests have been sent to the CNA and the Ivorian Nation ABS Ad Hoc Committee has analyzed 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.