The outgoing chair of the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Animal Genetic Resources (ITWG_AnGR), Francois Pythoud from Switzerland started his speech with the remark that animal genetic resources really had hogged the limelight during the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Hyderabad, India, earlier this month. He was impressed by the number of side-events on the subject that had taken place, as well as an exhibition of India’s indigenous breeds at the side-lines of the event.
With Access and Benefit-Sharing being on the agenda here in Rome, things are heating up. African countries are promoting Biocultural Community protocols, but its still a new subject for many others. The above picture from the LIFE Network’s side-event in Hyderabad was graciously shared by Polish animal scientist Dr. Ela Martyniuk, and it symbolizes for me how far we have come in the last decade. At the beginning of the new millenium, livestock keepers were not even considered as stakeholders in the conservation of animal genetic resources, but now there is probably consensus that they are the key-actors!
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