The U.S. Culture Collection Network Responding to the Requirements of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing

Abstract

The U.S. Culture Collection Network held a meeting to share information about how culture collections are responding to the requirements of the recently enacted Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The meeting included representatives of many culture collections and other biological collections, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Secretariat of the CBD, interested scientific societies, and collection groups, including Scientific Collections International and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network. The participants learned about the policies of the United States and other countries regarding access to genetic resources, the definition of genetic resources, and the status of historical materials and genetic sequence information. Key topics included what constitutes access and how the CBD Access and Benefit-Sharing Clearing-House can help guide researchers through the process of obtaining Prior Informed Consent on Mutually Agreed Terms. U.S. scientists and their international collaborators are required to follow the regulations of other countries when working with microbes originally isolated outside the United States, and the local regulations required by the Nagoya Protocol vary by the country of origin of the genetic resource. Managers of diverse living collections in the United States described their holdings and their efforts to provide access to genetic resources. This meeting laid the foundation for cooperation in establishing a set of standard operating procedures for U.S. and international culture collections in response to the Nagoya Protocol.

Biological control and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing – a case of effective due diligence

“…An initiative of the United States Culture Collections Network (USCCNwww.usccn.org/) brought stakeholders together to discuss how USA researchers should address the Nagoya Protocol, despite the USA not being party to it or the CBD. Common issues were discussed and issues around awareness and sharing information actioned (Boundy-Mills, Smith, McCluskey, Greene, & Duke, 2017;McCluskey et al, 2017). Nations are setting different criteria that trigger benefit sharing and also what these benefits are.…”

Public Microbial Resource Centers: Key Hubs for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) Microorganisms and Genetic Materials

“…In the future, the European Union plans to establish a registry of European mBRCs that can demonstrate full compliance with the NP and the European regulation 511/2014 (73) on compliance measure for users from the NP. The advantage of accessing biological resources from mBRCs with the status of "registered collection" is that users will be considered as having exercised due diligence regarding ABS and thus would benefit from less administrative workload to access resources in legal certainty (63,64).…”

Capacity of United States federal government and its partners to rapidly and accurately report the identity (taxonomy) of non-native organisms intercepted in early detection programs

“…The nature of invasive species means that relevant taxonomic expertise may lie in their countries of origin outside the United States, and information may have to be sought from these specialists; international networks and contacts are required (Davis Declaration 2001; Stack and Fletcher 2007;Stack 2010). This requirement can pose problems that need resolution: locating experts; response time; management of experts; ability of a federal agency to issue a contract to pay for identifications; and impediments in sending specimens between countries from Access and Benefit-Sharing regulations (McCluskey et al 2017).…”