India will push for a protocol on biodiversity preservation and also for inclusion of human pathogens in the access and benefit sharing (ABS) protocol in Nagoya. A 12-day long 10th Conference of Parties (CoP-10) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) begins from October 18 in Japan. “India and Brazil are leading the developing countries in battling for including human pathogens in framework of ABS. We will want to finalise a protocol in Nagoya,” Jairam Ramesh, the minister of environment and forests said at a conference.

Ramesh said that biodiversity was a very important issue for India as it is one of the richest countries in bio resources. Another issue that India would insist upon is that the entire value chain, or even derivatives, of a bio resource should be a part of the ABS. “While the developing countries want derivatives to be included, the developed countries want to limit the ABS to the primary source (of a bio resource),” he added.

India and Brazil are leading a group of 17 ‘mega diverse’ countries to put across the demands of the developing nations to combat biopiracy. The date of the operationalisation of the CBD is also an issue of debate among the developed and developing nations. “Some nations want the agreement to be operationalised with retrospective effect but India says that we can’t go back in history,” the minister added.

He said that a lot of the developing nations, including India, favoured making the Patent Office as a point of control whereas the developed countries wanted other institutions. “While the developing nations want transparency and total disclosure, the developed countries insist on a graded system of disclosure,” Ramesh added.