On 7-8 February 2018, Minsk hosted an Inception Workshop on the International Technical Assistance Project “Strengthening of human resources, legal frameworks and institutional capacities to implement the Nagoya Protocol in the Republic of Belarus”. The Institute of Genetics and Cytology, NAS of Belarus, is the project executing entity in the Republic of Belarus.
This project is part of a Global Project for 24 countries and is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The event started with the welcoming speech of Alexander Korbut, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, Valentina Lemesh, Director of the Institute of Genetics and Cytology, NAS of Belarus, and Claudio Chiarolla, Regional Project Specialist, UNDP-GEF Global ABS Project in Europe and Central Asia. Global Project Implementation Units from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, representatives of Scientific Institutions of biology profile and agrarian sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, genetic resources’ holders, representatives from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Belarus took part in the workshop.
During the workshop, the participants familiarized with project objectives and targets, its structure, timeframes and scheduled activities. The representatives from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan involved in the Global Project implementation in their countries shared their experience relating to the project realization in the regional countries, discussed the challenges and how to tackle them.
Alongside this, bilateral and trilateral meetings and consultations on the project implementation strategy were held.
Based on the activity results, proposals on regional cooperation across countries of the region implementing the project were prepared. This includes sharing of documents using cloud technologies, regular Skype conferences, holding of the next regional workshop in early 2019, joint publications on genetic resources’ use and the Nagoya Protocol implementation and designing of a plan for trilateral cooperation after the end of the project.