Various aspects of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and provisions under the law were discussed at the fourth Awareness Workshop on 'Guidelines for Access to Biological Resources under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002' at Pune on June 29.

The workshop supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Centre for Biodiversity Policy and Law (CEBPOL) and organised by Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), was held at the National Centre for Cell Science's Microbial Culture Collection (MCC) at Pune.

The Pune workshop was the fourth in the series after the first one was held in New Delhi (June 13), followed by Guwahati (June 22) and Kolkata (June 24). Two more workshops will be held at Bangalore (July 14) and Hyderabad (July 15).

Explaining the significance, senior scientist 'D', Dr. Manoj Kumar Modi, Department of Biotechnology said, "India is a country with rich biodiversity but researchers, industry and academia are not aware of the provisions under the Biodiversity Act. We are conducting a series of workshops across the country to create awareness about this."

Provisions in the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 with a focus on provisions relevant to ABS (Access and Benefit Sharing), Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources, guidelines on access to biological resources and associated knowledge and benefits sharing regulations, 2014; compliance on guidelines to ABS and an interactive session with stakeholders were held at the workshop.