The FAO - CBD - OECD Biosafety Databases Forum

Background

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) each host an international biosafety-related database with individual mandates and scopes.

On 12 November 2014, the "Webinar on the International Biosafety Databases" was jointly organized by FAO, CBD and OECD. During the webinar, representatives of the three organizations made presentations on the mandate, scope and activities of the FAO GM Foods Platform, the Biosafety Clearing House of the CBD and the OECD BioTrack Product Database.

One of the key points discussed during the webinar was the importance of national focal/contact points for each of the three databases to work together in close collaboration at the national level. Although the participants of the webinar widely acknowledged the necessity of such collaborations, many participants stated that they are in need of establishing and/or improving effective communication and coordination mechanisms (the report of the 2014 webinar can be downloaded here).

The BCH - FAO - OECD Biosafety Databases Forum page has been created to facilitate further discussion on effective communication mechanisms at the national level among the focal/contact points for the three biosafety databases hosted by the CBD, FAO and OECD in preparation for future webinars. This page also serves as a means to disseminate information on upcoming webinars and other relevant activities, hosted in collaboration between the three Secretariats.

Joint FAO-CBD-OECD webinars on International Databases on Biosafety

• 2nd Webinar on "Good practices for effective national communication mechanisms" - held on 27 May 2015
• 3rd Webinar on "Training on effective use of data on the databases" - held on 9 December 2015

Online discussion