Absalom Shigwedha
SHARM EL-SHEIKH – Kauna Betty Schroeder, the principal project coordinator in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), will serve on the Compliance Committee of the Nagoya Protocol (NP) on Access and Benefit Sharing of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Representing Africa on the committee, Schroeder, who has been an alternate member on the committee for the past four years, was nominated as a full member of the committee at the just-ended 14th Conference of Parties to the CBD, held in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm El-Sheikh.
Members of the committee are drawn from each of the five regions of the convention, namely; Africa, Asian Pacific, Latin America and The Carribbean, Western Europe and Other Groups, and Central Eastern European Group.
Each of the groups are represented by three members in the committee, and the serving term for the committee members is four years.
Members are nominated by parties to the CBD in their individual capacity.
Schroeder has in the past served as Namibia’s Focal Point for the CBD’s Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, and she negotiated on behalf of the country and Africa on these issues.
Before being nominated as a full member of the committee, Schroeder was an alternate member of the committee. She also spearheaded the finalisation of Namibia’s Access and Benefit Sharing, and the Associated Traditional Act, which was promulgated in 2017.
The tasks for the Compliance Committee of this Protocol is to examine the situation where Parties fail to submit their national reports under Article 29 of the Protocol. Other members of the committee from the African region are: Dr Ek Khtima, Ashenaji Ayenew (alternate member), and William Akun.
Other duties of the committee are to scrutinise information that indicates that a Party is facing difficulties to comply with the said Article. It is also to deal with systematic issues of general non-compliance.
Article 29 of the Nagoya Protocol stipulates that “Each Party shall monitor the implementation of its obligations under the Protocol, and shall, at intervals and in the format, be determined by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol, report to the Conference of the Parties to this Protocol on measures that it has taken to implement this Protocol.’’
The Nagoya Protocol was adopted on 29 October 2010 in Nagoya (Japan), and came into force on 12 October 2014. It has been ratified by 114 Parties, which include 113 United Nations member States and the European Union.