ABS Clearing House
What is the ABS Clearing House?
The ABS Clearing House is an information-sharing platform which is intended to:
- help researchers to find information about how to legally obtain access to research material (and associated traditional knowledge)
- help provider countries to get information about how their material is used once it leaves the country
The ABS Clearing House should always be your first port of call!
If you need to check whether ABS applies to you, the first place to look for this information is the ABS Clearing House.
While the clearing house is a great resource, it is not always perfect. Sometimes information is missing or out of date. You need to keep this in mind and if necessary, look for information from other sources!
What information can you find in the ABS Clearing House?
There is a lot of information in the ABS Clearing House. At first glance, it may seem a little overwhelming but you need to find your way through.
What can you find there?
This information is provided by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. You can 100% rely on this information.
The national focal point, or NFP for short, is officially responsible for making information available on access and benefit-sharing, procedures etc.
In most cases, this is the person you would usually contact first. However, this person may have more of a political function, in which case you may need to contact the competent national authority (see below).
Caution!
- Don’t be surprised if some of the people listed in the ABS Clearing House have an email address from Gmail or yahoo, for example. In some countries, ministerial and other government employees do not have dedicated government email addresses.
- Your email might bounce – sometimes the contact details in the ABS Clearing House are not up to date.
A competent national authority, or CNA for short, is responsible, for example, for granting access, providing evidence that access requirements have been met and advising on applicable procedures etc.
In some countries, there are different CNAs responsible for granting access to different types of material or material collected in different places.
Caution!
- Don’t be surprised if some of the people listed in the ABS Clearing House have an email address from Gmail or yahoo, for example. In some countries, ministerial and other government employees do not have dedicated government email addresses.
- Your email might bounce – sometimes the contact details in the ABS Clearing House are not up to date.
The Nagoya Protocol must be implemented at the national level in order for researchers to have concrete obligations.
Countries may adopt different types of measures, including laws, regulations, policies and procedures.
Caution! Just because there are no measures listed in the ABS Clearing House does not necessarily mean that none exist.
Some countries provide a list of steps or a visualisation of the national access and benefit-sharing process and what steps need to be taken.
Some countries have developed model agreements which are used for benefit-sharing arrangements.
Caution! These model agreements are not always listed in the ABS Clearing House.
An Internationally Recognized Certificate of Compliance (IRCC) indicates that material has been obtained in accordance with national laws on access and benefit-sharing. The Clearing House generates the permit based on information provided by the relevant authority in the provider country.
Sometimes copies of national permits are also uploaded into the ABS Clearing House.
Researchers will not be given an IRCC directly!
If you want to have an IRCC, you will need to check the ABS Clearing House to see if one has been published.
No IRCC? Don’t worry! It’s not compulsory to have an IRCC in order to show that you are Nagoya Protocol compliant in Germany. National permits etc. are sufficient for this purpose.
Some countries have national level websites or clearing houses with detailed information on access and benefit-sharing.
These reports can provide insight into whether there are access and benefit-sharing laws in the country. This can be helpful if laws themselves are not listed in the ABS Clearing House.
Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security – information might be missing! For example, relevant laws might exist but they are not listed in the ABS Clearing House!
Some non-Parties also have national laws on access and benefit-sharing listed under their country profiles.
Information in the ABS Clearing House is not always available in English. You may need to ask colleagues or your collaborating partners to help you overcome language barriers.
Guidelines for researchers on access and benefit-sharing
Various professional associations, including the Consortium of European Taxanomic Facilities (CETAF), German Research Foundation and Swiss Academy of Science, have created guidelines to support academic researchers with ABS.
CETAF Code of Conduct and Best Practice
The CETAF Code of Conduct and Best Practice is recognised by the European Commission. It is a comprehensive guideline for institutions and researchers, which supports compliance with access and benefit-sharing laws as well as the compliance obligations in the European Union.
The document is publicly available and can, in principle, be used by anyone. The seven annexes include a number of useful tools. These are:
- Annex 1 – Best Practice guidelines for establishing ABS measures at an institutional level
- Annex 2 – A template for describing your project and proposed research, which could be used when communicating with the authorities in the country where the material comes from
- Annex 3 – A basic glossary of terms commonly used in the “ABS world”
- Annex 4 – A list of typical benefits arising from non-commercial research
- Annex 5 – “ABS Checklists” for researchers and institutions for different stages of the research process, including the planning, implementation and follow-up phases
- Annex 6 – Four different model Material Transfer Agreements
- Annex 7 – A template for a data use statement
Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing
This Good Practice Guide developed by the Swiss Academy of Sciences provides an overview of ABS and the implications for academic research. These guidelines are intended to support researchers, research managers and heads of departments, providing information that is relevant to both the planning and implementation phases of research projects that are Nagoya Protocol relevant.
DFG Guidelines for Funding Proposals Concerning Research Projects within the Scope of the CBD
The German Research Foundation has explanatory guidelines on access and benefit-sharing (available in English and German), which provide academic researchers with an overview of how the Nagoya Protocol affects their research.
Model agreements for benefit-sharing
Model clauses are standardised contractual clauses that can be used as a basis for benefit-sharing agreements.
A number of model clauses have been developed to support the ABS process, e.g. by professional associations and the governments of countries that provide biological material for research.
For more information, see the page on benefit-sharing.
Nagoya Look-up Service
What is the Nagoya Lookup Service?
The Nagoya Lookup Service is a tool that can be used by anybody but it might be especially useful for researchers working with biological material who are interested in knowing whether there are any ABS rules that apply to the material they want to use. This might be material that will be collected in the field or material that will be obtained from existing archives or collections.
How does it work?
Just enter the GPS coordinates of the site where the biological material will be sampled or where it originated from and the service will provide you with up-to-date information on the Nagoya Party status of the sampling location as well as providing links to the ABS Clearing House. Anyone using the service will have to contact the national focal point or other relevant authority indicated in the relevant country profile for further information.
The source, which is in the github repository, can be found here. Just follow the instructions in the README.md file to get the service up and running on your computer.
Who created the service?
The Nagoya Lookup Service was developed by Seifert et al. and integrates open source data from the ABS Clearing House, Marine Regions, GeoNames and WikiData. The information provided through the Nagoya Lookup Service does not constitute legal advice.