Civil society organisations in Asia have made yet another attempt to ensure that the multilateral system for benefit sharing under the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGFRA) is not watered down.
As delegates from many countries in Asia gather in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to prepare for the next ITPGFRA meeting, civil society organisations have sent a letter to the governments of these countries, requesting them to reject the proposed amendments to the Treaty.
The proposal is to expand the scope of the Multilateral System (MLS) for access and benefit sharing of the Plant Treaty from the current 64 crops to all plant genetic resources. This would lay open all 350,000 known species for use, according to the letter.
They added that this would not have been of concern if a robust system of benefit sharing existed. However, even after sharing 6.6 million seeds with more than 25000 users, communities have failed to get any benefits. To date, only five users have made monetary contributions to the benefit sharing fund under the Treaty.
Civil society members maintain that unless the MLS is strengthened, expanding the list would be harmful. They have suggested multiple ways in which the system can be improved.
For one, it is imperative that major beneficiaries of the MLS such as the food processing industries, flavour and fragrance companies, beverages companies and other entities are also held responsible for sharing benefits. As of now, users are not expected to share benefits. This means that breeders who develops a variety using MLS resources do not need to share benefits unless they sell the seeds. They are free of obligation if they themselves grow and sell it as food or develops products using it.
The civil society members also point out that users of the MLS often hide behind “confidentiality” and avoid disclosing valuable knowledge or information resulting from their research activities on the shared seeds with the MLS and/or provider.
There are loopholes in the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) that are being exploited to claim intellectual property over the shared genetic resources such as patents on sequence data and/or commercial traits. The proposed changes do not address the issue of benefit sharing on digital sequence information derived from seeds and other propagating materials.
Though the Convention on Biological Diversity has decided that countries have the right to legislate on access to and use of digital sequence data and to receive fair and equitable benefits from their use, both the Plant Treaty and SMTA are silent about generation, storage, usage and benefit sharing from the use of sequence data.
This means that there is no clarity on whether users of plant genetic resource from the MLS can generate sequence data and share such sequence data publicly or with databases that permit anonymous access to hosted sequences. It is also not clear whether the users of this sequence data have any commitments including benefit sharing. International agriculture research centres such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research already freely share sequence data in a manner by which it can be used anonymously by third parties.
Instead of developing a robust and enforceable governance framework for generating and sharing of sequence data, a non-binding resolution is being proposed which makes it easy to bypass the MLS benefit sharing obligations, by simply accessing sequence data instead of physical genetic materials, the letter pointed out.
In the letter signed by 49 organisations which are mainly based in Asia, the organisations urge the member countries to do the following:
● Reject currently proposed amendments to Treaty and demand comprehensive reforms of the SMTA as well as the Treaty to ensure accountability, transparency and equitable benefit sharing.
● Oppose expanding the MLS’s scope to all plant genetic resources. Any addition of plant genetic resources to the MLS scope should be based on further negotiation on selection of crops to be added and any addition must be based on substantial evidence of its importance for food and agriculture. Further, any addition of crops should be tied up with a proportionate increase in benefit sharing commitments.
● Ensure effective governance, including of sequence data and monitoring mechanisms by amending the Treaty and SMTA: This is a prerequisite if the MLS system is not to be an exploitative system. Such mechanisms are a must, prior to adding more crops to the scope.
● Ensuring sequence data are shared only through the Global Information System or other databases accountable to Treaty and its Parties subject to user registration and undertaking of legally binding commitments to share benefits with National Authorities or MLS, as applicable.
● Extend monetary benefit sharing obligations to all industries from the food and agriculture sector, profiting from our genetic resources.
Delegates from Asian countries are gathered in Malaysia for the Asia Regional Preparatory meeting for the 14th meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group to Enhance the Functioning of the Multilateral system of the ITPGRFA scheduled in July. The three-day meeting is organised by the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute and would end on May 22, 2025.
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Nepal, representing Asia region developing countries had taken a strong stand on the issue at the 13th meeting too. Civil society had raised these issues earlier too when a global letter was sent to developing country negotiators in the working group in April 2025, demanding the rejection of the proposal to amend.