1.Reminds Parties of their obligations, and
invites other Governments, to:
(a)Provide to the Biosafety
Clearing-House, in a timely manner, complete and accurate
information on final decisions pertaining to living modified
organisms and the risk assessment summaries regarding such
decisions, as well as risk assessment summaries for all instances
when requested by the Protocol including, inter alia, intentional
introductions of living modified organisms into the environment for
field trials regardless on whether or not the living modified
organism will be subjected to future transboundary movements or
commercialization;
(b)Cooperate fully with the
Secretariat in its efforts to maintain complete information in the
Biosafety Clearing-House;
(c)Indicate and document specific
obstacles preventing or hindering the effective use of the
Biosafety Clearing-House;
2.Invites Parties, other Governments and users
of the Biosafety Clearing-House to continue making relevant
biosafety information available through the Biosafety Information
Resource Centre;
3.Also
invites Parties, other Governments and relevant organizations
to consider the implementation of the "LMO quick-link" tool by
their relevant national agencies when reference is made to a living
modified organism;
4.Requests Parties and invites other
Governments and relevant organizations to submit to the Executive
Secretary views on the changes made during the last intersessional
period to the (i) common formats; (ii) registration procedure;
(iii) tools for the analysis of search results; and (iv) graphical
representations of data, and requests the Executive Secretary to
take these views into account for future improvements of the
Biosafety Clearing-House;
5.Requests the Executive Secretary to continue
providing assistance and information to Parties on how to submit
and retrieve information from the central portal of the Biosafety
Clearing-House and to explore innovative ways for assisting Parties
in making information in the Biosafety Clearing-House available
also in languages other than the official United Nations
languages;
6.Also
requests the Executive Secretary to facilitate, through the
Biosafety Clearing-House, online forums and conferences on topics
relevant to biosafety and the implementation of the Protocol, in
particular to facilitate the common understanding of the use of
certain terms of Article 20 of the Protocol and of the type of
information that should be made available in risk assessments
submitted to the Biosafety Clearing-House;
7.Requests Parties and invites other
Governments and relevant organizations to participate actively in
the activities mentioned in paragraph 6 above with the view to
reaching an adequate level of regional participation and ensuring
that the results of the discussion may be taken into account;
8.Requests the Executive Secretary to increase
the involvement of Biosafety Clearing-House national focal points
by promoting, inter alia , regular exchange of information
and online discussions and to explore innovative ways for gathering
views from Parties where internet connectivity is limited;
9.Invites relevant United Nations bodies and
international organizations to enhance cooperation and avoid
duplication regarding the provision of information on living
modified organisms and requests the Executive Secretary to
explore ways to develop a mechanism for harmonizing similar data
from various other sources (e.g. the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development and the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations) with the view to avoiding
duplication of efforts and improving the utility of the Biosafety
Clearing-House as a global mechanism for information-sharing on
biosafety;
10.Invites Parties, other Governments and
relevant international organizations to provide funding and to
strengthen and expand initiatives aimed at overcoming obstacles
encountered by developing country Parties, in particular the least
developed and small island developing States among them, and
Parties with economies in transition, in meeting their obligations
under Article 20 of the Protocol, including capacity-building and
the development of infrastructure necessary for facilitating the
retrieval and submission of information to the Biosafety
Clearing-House;
11.Requests Parties and invites other
Governments to identify their needs regarding national Biosafety
Clearing-House nodes in a detailed manner through the Biosafety
Clearing-House, and requests the United Nations
Environment Programme, through the ongoing "Project for Continued
Enhancement of Building Capacity for Effective Participation in the
Biosafety Clearing-House" (hereinafter referred to as "the BCH-II
project"), and the Executive Secretary to provide the necessary
support for the needs identified;
12.Encourages Parties, relevant United Nations
bodies and relevant international organizations to continue
training activities at the national and regional levels and
welcomes the offers by the Republic of Korea and the
Islamic Republic of Iran to host sub-regional workshops in 2011 in
cooperation with relevant international organizations;
13.Invites Parties, other Governments and
relevant organizations to make funds available for the
operationalization of paragraph 5 above for the benefit of
developing country Parties, in particular the least developed and
small island developing States among them, and Parties with
economies in transition;
14.Requests the United Nations Environment
Programme, through the BCH-II project, to promote capacity-building
activities at the global, regional and, in particular, sub-regional
levels in order to increase exchange of experiences among different
countries;
15.Further
requests the United Nations Environment Programme, through the
BCH II project, to produce in collaboration with the Executive
Secretary, further guidance on the Biosafety Clearing-House with
special attention to the various target stakeholders (e.g.
government officials, media, the general public, members of
civil-society organizations, etc.) and to categories of potential
users that have been identified as being least aware of the
Biosafety Clearing-House.
