Convention on Biological Diversity and access to genetic resources: International regime and our experiences

C on Biological Diversity(CBD), is the first international attempt to provide a legal framework for ensuring conservation and sustainable use of the genetic resources in addition to addressing concerns of equity. This international convention promotes services to the communities involved in creation and conservation of biological resources, in the form of adequate reward and compensation and as an incentive to continue conservation. Interest in access to genetic resources as an international issue grew in the early 1980s and got focused in the negotiations leading to the CBD. The livelihoods of millions of the rural people around the world depend on the biological resources and the associated traditional knowledge that has evolved over centuries of how best to manage and use those resources and the genetic material they contain. (Bala et al, 2004).