“What You Need to Know about the Nagoya Protocol, Access, and Benefit-sharing When Planning Your Research” Presented By: Patrick Reilly, U.S. Department of State; and Rachel Meyer, University of California, Santa Cruz Watch the recording here.…

Whether or not you conduct international research, the Nagoya Protocol, along with issues of access and benefit-sharing, should be a part of every researcher’s thinking. The Nagoya Protocol is a multilateral treaty that sets up the legal framework for utilizing genetic resources. This treaty has important implications on research and should be considered when thinking about how to conduct research, manage collections, and work with partners. Learn more about the Nagoya Protocol, what it says (and what it doesn’t), how it impacts scientists’ work presently, and in the future, and how the US government can help. Patrick Reilly, the US Nagoya Focal Point based at the US State Department, and Rachel Meyer from UC Santa Cruz will join us to explain what the Nagoya Protocol is, how to productively engage with it and what resources are available to you. They will take questions following the presentation.

Patrick is a Foreign Affairs Officer with the U.S. Department of State, serving in the Office of Conservation and Water in Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Scientific Affairs. In this role, he serves as the U.S. Focal Point for Nagoya, and the Department’s expert on access and benefit-sharing (ABS) issues. He works on genetic resource issues across various multilateral instruments, including the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), the Nagoya Protocol (NP), the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the Pandemic Influenza Pandemic Framework (PIP), and the Biodiversity Beyond National Borders (BBND) negotiations.

Rachel Meyer is an adjunct assistant professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research is in ethnobotany, crop genomics, and metagenomics. She has been the executive director of the UC Conservation Genomics Consortium since 2016 and works closely with the Earth BioGenome Project.