The 6 ABS books published

NIBR released its new ABS publications on 19 January 2023, covering 5 foreign countries’ ABS policies and 1 ABS manual (revised edition). The 6 books are now available at the Genetic Resource Information Center (GRIC)’s website (www.abs.go.kr).  

The 5 foreign countries, which are the Philippines, Laos, Peru, France, and Spain, have established domestic ABS legislations and procedures, and that new books provide details of each country’s biodiversity status, and its ABS laws and policies including access report (PIC) and benefit sharing measures (MATs).  

Prior to the ABS books on the 5 countries, NIBR released 6 ABS publications covering India, Kenya, and South Africa’s ABS policies in 2019; Vietnam and Brazil in 2020; and Malaysia in 2021. 

The ABS manual book (2023) is newly revised based on the 2019 edition, covering a total of 87 countries that have ABS legislations categorizing according to whether access procedures applied, different ABS scopes, negotiating actors of benefit-sharing contracts, and benefit-sharing types, together with a comprehensive list of the138 Parties to the Nagoya Protocol as of today.    

GRIC expects the new 6 books can support ABS compliance of Korean biotech companies and stakeholders who deal with foreign biological resources by providing accurate and recent foreign ABS policies and procedures in detail. GRIC will continue to provide useful ABS information for the Korean biotech industry.