The Cabinet approved a bill on genetic resources usage on Tuesday as South Korea’s effort to operationalize the Nagoya Protocol, which took effect on Oct. 12 under the global community’s join effort to preserve biodiversity.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources at its 10th conference in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010.

The pact, ratified by 54 countries, stipulates on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use to the convention on biological diversity.

The Nagoya Protocol’s first meeting of the Conference of the Parties is being held from Oct. 13-17, concurrently with the 12th CBD gathering in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province.

“Under the agreement, access to genetic resources for their utilization should be subject to the prior informed consent of the party (a member country) providing such resources,” said an official of the Ministry of Environment.

Meanwhile, state and private researchers say that the protocol purports to give member states effective tools to protect their sovereign rights against unlawful bio-piracy and to share in the benefits of exploitation of their genetic resources.

The ministry ― in collaboration with the National Institute of Biological Resources ― has started work to enhance its sovereignty over native plants, with one key effort being databasing traditional knowledge associated with native plants.

“To claim our property rights to certain plants or flowers, we need to present substantive evidence supporting our claim,” a researcher said.

He stressed that documentation or a database of traditional knowledge associated with native natural resources is one of the most effective ways to strengthen the sovereignty over biological resources. “Such data will help us prove that Koreans have long been using such plants for particular purposes.”

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)