The grouping of like-minded megadiverse countries has decided to create a fund, the Megadiverse Cooperation Fund, to support projects in countries that meet the objectives of the 17-member group.
The LMMC, which includes countries rich in bio-diversity such as India, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa, and Venezuela, was formed to assist each other in developing human resources, capabilities, legal and public policy to enable them to take an active part in the new economy associated with the use of biological diversity and biotechnology.
The New Delhi ministerial declaration on access and benefit sharing states the grouping will work for the development of an international regime on the issue, including legally binding instruments, in the forthcoming meetings of the ad-hoc open-ended working group under the aegis of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The megadiverse countries have also agreed to ensure that the proposed access and benefit sharing pact includes prior informed consent of the country of origin and mutually agreed upon terms between the country of origin and the user country.
The declaration also states that the proposed international regime on access and benefit sharing should include "mandatory disclosure of the country of origin of biological material and associated traditional knowledge in the intellectual property rights application, along with an undertaking that the prevalent laws and practices of the country of origin have been respected and mandatory specific consequences in the event of failure to disclose the country of origin in the IPR application".
While the Convention on Biological Diversity envisages that access to genetic resources and realisation of benefits is subject to national legislation through formalisation of prior informed consent and mutually agreed upon terms, India has been emphasising that such national action alone is not sufficient to ensure realisation of benefits to the country of origin or the provider country.
This is particularly so in cases where genetic material sourced from one country is utilised in another country for developing products and processes on which patent protection is obtained.The onus of benefit sharing must also be shared by the user country to create an enabling environment and confidence through legislative measures so as to ensure compliance of prior informed consent stipulations and equitable sharing of benefits as visualized in the Convention on Biological Diversity.
