Australia's focus is on the Asia-Pacific region where Australia has
supported a number of regional and sub-regional meetings and has
undertaken a range of activities to directly address biosafety
issues. Examples include the following:
1) A regulatory expert from the Department of AFFA gave: a) a
presentation to the Pacific Plant Protection Organisation (PPPO)
Executive Committee meeting on GMO developments and regulatory
approaches in August 1999; b) a presentation on GMO developments
and regulatory approaches at a SPREP Invasive Species Workshop in
September 1999 and c) in-house presentations on biosafety issues as
part of training programs provided to a number of countries
including China and Korea.
2) The Australian Environment Ministry, Environment Australia,
identified Biosafety capacity building as area of cooperation in an
agreement recently concluded with China's State Environment
Protection Administration.
3) In December 1999, Australia fully funded a regional workshop on
Bioosafety in Fiji, organised by the South Pacific Commission (SPC)
in collaboration with the South Pacific Regional Environment
Program (SPREP) which, for the first time, brought together key
government decision makers from South Pacific Island agriculture,
quarantine environment and conservation departments to discuss GMO
risks and benefits and appropriate regulatory approaches. (The
report of the meeting is available at SCBD). The feedback was that
the workshop was very helpful to the Pacific Island Countries that
attended. It clearly underlined the usefulness of collaboration at
the national level between regulatory practitioners and policy
makers. SPREP plans to hold a further regional workshop on
Biosafety in collaboration with SPC later this year, which would
explain additional risk assessment and other procedures generated
under the Biosafety Protocol. Australia expects to provide
technical assistance to the workshop.
4) Australia has also contributed to work within the Agricultural
Technical Cooperation Experts Group of APEC, which has been
developing a program of cooperation in research, development and
extension of agricultural biotechnology. The main focus of this
work is on information exchange and capacity building in developing
economies aimed at facilitating the uptake of biotechnology and
influencing the development of national processes and procedures
for evaluating biotechnology products. The main focus of the expert
group's biotechnology work program in 2000 is on: a) completing a
"best practice" guide to risk communication relating to
agricultural biotechnology; b) compiling a series of case studies
on issues related to intellectual property rights, including plant
variety protection, for transgenic crops of specific regional
interest; c) reporting on risk assessment and risk management
procedures to facilitate improved regional coordination and
efficient use of risk assessment resources; d) increasing
collaboration with the IPPC Secretariat in developing
standards/guidelines for biosafety risk assessment (in cooperation
with the ACTEG sub-group on Animal and Plant Quarantine and Pest
Management); e) convening the fourth biotechnology workshop
focusing on capacity building and public information in the context
of agricultural biotechnology.
National level activities
Information exchange & data management
Scientific, technical and institutional collaboration
Regional level activities
Coordination and harmonization of regulatory frameworks
Other
Regional collaborative initiatives
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