Bishkek – Kyrgyzstan – The Regional Environmental Center for Central Asia (CAREC) Country Office for Kyrgyzstan held a round table conference to review the Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena Protocol on March 16, 2023. The event was organized under the UNEP-GEF project “Sustainable capacity building for effective participation in the Cartagena Protocol Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH)” implemented by the CAREC country office for Kyrgyzstan.
The project aims to support capacity-building initiatives to strengthen and expand the capacity to ensure the safe handling, transportation and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology. In 2020 - 2022, the CAREC country office for Kyrgyzstan, with the support of UNEP experts, held three national seminars on the application of procedures and mechanisms necessary to achieve sustainability of effective participation in the BCH. The round table to the review of the Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena Protocol is the final event of the project.
The round table gathered representatives of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Ministry of Agriculture of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic, the State Customs Service of the Kyrgyz Republic, the State Agency of Intellectual Property and Innovation of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Institute of Biotechnology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Forest Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Research and Production Center forest research named after P.A. Ghana and presented the FAO-GEF project “Implementation of the national Biosafety mechanism in the Kyrgyz Republic in accordance with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety”.
They discussed the issues related to the implementation of the tasks under the Cartagena Protocol, the necessary regulatory legal documents to regulate the use of GMO products, and the interaction of state bodies based on the Biosafety Clearing-House.
According to the acting Executive Director of the CAREC country office for Kyrgyzstan Kuban Matraimov, the round table allowed participants to discuss cooperation between state organizations that participate in the process of registration, identification and use of GMOs.
“The use of GMOs in Kyrgyzstan is regulated by several legislative acts and subordinate regulatory documents, which were presented to the participants of the focus point round table on the Cartagena Protocol from the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision of the Kyrgyz Republic by Ivan Hegai,” said Kuban Matraimov.
UNEP experts: Dr Alexey Tarasjev and Dr Galina Mozgova participated online at the round table and presented in detail the features and conditions of application of the Cartagena Protocol and Biosafety Clearing-House as the main mechanism of cooperation between government agencies working with GMOs (LMO). This mechanism also prescribes the conditions for international cooperation
in the field of biosafety.
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