National Workshop in Mali - Role of Women, Indigenous and Local Communities in Implementation of Nagoya Protocol on ABS

The purpose of this activity was to strengthen the capacities of African countries to effectively implement commitments in biodiversity management, especially in the context of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Schemes; and to promote the involvement of all relevant stakeholders in ABS processes.

To this end, three workshops were organized in three African regions, namely West, East and Southern Africa. Those workshops took place respectively in the following three countries: Mali (Bamako) on 22 - 23 December 2014, Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) on 5 - 6 November 2014 and Malawi (Lilongwe) on 16 - 17 October 2014.In Mali, the training took place with rural women of the Samanko Farmers’ Cooperative in the outskirts of Bamako.  These workshops allowed the local communities to interact with genetic resources in the future by attaching value to the resources. Through the ABS schemes, communities will participate effectively in the development of policy regulation and will establish a more predictable condition for access to genetic resources. With this support, the communities received knowledge to ensure benefit-sharing creates incentives to conserve and sustainably use genetic resources. A strengthened control of illegal transfer of genetic natural resources will hopefully result in the midterm from these activities. It is foreseen that once relevant policies are domesticated and implemented, both users and providers of genetic resources will benefit from the increased investment in research and bio-prospecting.