BCH Reports & Reviews

Once a year the Secretariat reports on the operation of the Biosafety Clearing-House. Primary data, such as the number and regional distribution of National Focal Points, as well as the number of records made available through the BCH, are reported below. Detailed reports on the activities and partnership arrangements that have been entered into, as well as feedback provided by Parties and other Governments on their experiences with the operation of the BCH, are also available from this page.

Sections

• BCH Log Reports (number of records and visits per year)
• BCH Annual Reports (issued by the Secretariat)
• User survey, feedback and other publication on the BCH

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BCH Log Reports (number of records and visits per year)

BCH records per year				2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
National Contacts
	Protocol focal points			181	186	191	187	174
		Africa (AFR)		47	51	55	56	53
		Asia-Pacific (AP)		44	44	46	48	45
		CEE		25	26	25	25	24
		GRULAC		38	38	37	33	29
		WEOG		27	27	28	25	23
	BCH focal points			189	186	190	191	185
		Africa (AFR)		53	50	53	53	53
		Asia-Pacific (AP)		49	49	49	52	51
		CEE		23	24	23	23	22
		GRULAC		33	32	32	33	29
		WEOG		31	31	33	30	30
	Article 17 focal points			59	63	73	80	79
	Competent National Authorities			228	267	314	346	348
	National biosafety websites and databases			74	84	99	105	108
Total records (1)				613	674	753	790	795
Laws & Regulations
	National laws			292	438	541	572	593
	Bilateral, multilateral and regional agreements			38	41	41	39	13
	Other							2
Total records (1)				330	479	582	612	608
Country's Decisions and other Communications
	Decisions under AIA (2)			1	5	7	306	326
	Decisions under Art. 11.1 (LMO-FFPs)			452	495	574	617	640
	Other decisions and declarations			41	49	100	350	354
Total records (1)				494	549	681	771	801
Risk assessments reports (3)				895	1,292	1,951	388	453
Roster of Experts
	Roster of experts members (4)			639	645	0	75	86
	Reports on expert assignments			0	0	0	0	0
Total records (1)				639	645	0	75	86
Total records submitted by countries				2,971	3,639	3,967	2,636	2,743
BCH Registries
	LMO registry			159	171	289	331	346
	Gene registry			54	57	176	229	254
	Parental Organism registry			63	71	151	140	148
Total records				276	299	616	700	748
Capacity-building activities
	CB opportunities (5)			67	82	94	111	339
	Capacity-building projects (5)			125	133	136	156	-
	Biosafety-related training and education programmes (5)			38	33	35	40	-
	Reports on CB initiatives (5)			-	-	-	-	-
	Capacity needs and priorities			52	53	59	60	15
Total records				282	301	324	367	354
International Organizations				136	142	190	209	216
Records in the Scientific Bibliographic Database (by ICGEB)				-	7,017	7,834	7,711	7,783
Records in the Biosafety Information Resource Centre (BIRC) (6)				6,101	742	933	1,002	1,136
Total number of records in the BCH				9,766	12,140	13,864	12,625	12,980
BCH visits per year (7)				2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Total Hits				2,278,903	3,196,776	3,554,142	6,757,638	6,774334
	Average Hits Per Day			6,243	8,758	9,710	18,514	18,559
Total Visitors				513,022	859,636	382,658	520,726	681,828
	Average Visitors Per Day			1,405	2,355	1,045	1,426	1,868
Total Page Views				776,447	1,307,521	1,250,753	2,503,876	2,411,845
	Average Page Views Per Day			2,127	3,582	3,417	6,859	6,607
Total File Downloads				54,060	57,269	68,429	141,889	171,933
	Average File Downloads Per Day			148	156	186	388	471

Notes:
(1) The difference between the sum of the records listed in each category and the total number of records is due to the possibility that one record contains information for more than one category (e.g. a focal point may have more than one role); in this case the same record is listed two or three times in the breakdown.
(2) In September 2009, following a revision of the common formats for the submission of information, hundreds of decisions under AIA (introduction into the environment) submitted in previous years, were made visible after the solution of an ambiguity in the former common format for the submission of information on Decisions under Article 11.1 (LMO-FFPs).
(3) In September 2009, following a revision of the common format for the submission of information, more than 2000 risk assessment records were removed because they did not specify the LMO that was the object of the risk assessment.
(4) In August 2008, following up a COP-MOP request in decision BS-IV/4, all experts previously registered in the Roster were removed.
(5) In 2010 the categories Capacity-building opportunities, projects, training and education programmes and report on initiatives were merged in a single category.
(6) Prior to 2007 the records contained in the Scientific Bibliographic Database and the Biosafety Information Resource Centre were combined in a single database
(7) Data produced by the Web Customer Analysis Tool '123 Log Analyzer'

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BCH Annual Reports

Annual reviews of the operation of the BCH are provided by the Secretariat at the end of each calendar year in accordance with Section G (reports on activities) of the BCH’s Modalities of Operation.

Search the BCH Annual Reports: <Select year> 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004

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User survey, feedback and other publications on the BCH

The implementation and operation of the BCH are subject to periodic review, which include consultation with a wide variety of BCH users. Results of these reviews are usually submitted to the attention of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol (COP-MOP) as information documents.

2010	•	UNEP/CBD/BS/COP-MOP/5/INF/1 - Study of users and potential users of the Biosafety Clearing-House; by Aleksej Tarasjev.
2009	•	Terminal Evaluation of project Building Capacity for Participation in the Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH) - Phase I (GF/6010-04-02 (4771) - GFL/2328-2716-4771). Evaluation conducted by Hugo Navajas in July 2009 for the UNEP Evaluation and Oversight Unit. Executive Summary, Lessons Learned, Findings and Recommendations as well as EOU Commentary are also available on the GEF website.
	•	Results of the RA&RM and Capacity Building Forums' Survey (conducted by SCBD in March 2009)
2008	•	Effective participation in the Biosafety Clearing House: Participation options and impediments to information provision. An academic report prepared by Ms. Aarti Gupta, Assistant Professor, Wageningen University for the UNEP-GEF BCH Project, May 2008.
	•	Learning from Experience - The Global UNEP-GEF BCH Capacity Building Project
	•	External BCH Security Audit (requested by COP-MOP decision BS-III/2)
	•	Report of the 2007 Survey of BCH Users (requested by COP-MOP decision BS-III/2)
2006	•	Recommendations of the BCH Regional Advisors for the Central Portal: Experiences of One Year as Regional Advisors
	•	Submissions regarding constraints on making information available to the BCH (requested by COP-MOP decision BS-III/2): EU; Norway
	•	Bridging the gap between researchers and policy-makers: International collaboration through the Biosafety Clearing-House. Kirsty Galloway Mclean, Environ. Biosafety Res. 4 (2005) 123–126.
2005	•	BCH Internal Review (requested by COP-MOP decision BS-I/3)
2003	•	Views on the transition between the pilot phase and the fully operational and functional BCH (requested in ICCP recommendation 3/3): Australia; EU; Paraguay; Switzerland; USA; ICGEB; OECD; WWF
	•	Questionnaire on resources and expertise available in countries for the exchange of information with the BCH (submitted by the UNEP-GEF Biosafety Projects)
2002	•	Independent Evaluation of the BCH Pilot Phase Implementation - by T. Peterson (requested in ICCP recommendation 1/4)

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