ABS Stakeholder Meeting - Vanuatu

On 26 November, 2012, a national stakeholder meeting was facilitated by Vanuatu’s Department of Environment and Conservation together with the national GEF Small Grants Program on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). The purpose of the meeting was to brief a range of diverse stakeholders on the Nagoya Protocol on ABS to the Convention on Biological Diversity and its significance to them, as well as to receive an update on the process of Vanuatu ratifying the Protocol. Vanuatu, which signed the Nagoya Protocol in 2011, is planning to ratify the Protocol in the near future depending on national regulatory requirements.

Johanna von Braun from Natural Justice and Andreas Drews from the ABS Capacity Development Initiative provided technical input to the meeting and supported discussions on the next steps for both governmental and non-governmental stakeholders in this process. After a fruitful debate both stakeholder groups identified a number of priority areas to be targeted in the immediate and medium-term future.