Workshop Review

The workshop was successful in the sense of the lessons and insights it provided the Initiative for such future endeavors especially the forthcoming workshop prior to the ABS WG 6 meeting in Geneva in January 2008. The African delegates present at the workshop had varying degrees of experience on the issues before them. The capacity development was therefore extremely useful for those of them who had just begun to come to grips with the nuances of ABS. There were other African delegates however who had followed the ABS negotiations for a number of years and found some of the workshop information was covering the ground they were already familiar with.

After the morning session of the second day of the workshop there was much discussion amongst the African delegates as to whether it would be more fruitful to break with the workshop agenda and instead focus on the Grenada text that was to be discussed at the ABS WG 5 meeting. A decision was made to discuss the Grenada text. This episode in many ways was telling to the Initiative as to the mood and the tenor of the African delegates prior to negotiation meetings. There was a careful reviewing by the Initiative as to the way forward at the next workshop prior to the ABS WG 6 meeting. One of the suggestions was to have a workshop that focused less on training and more as a forum to discuss the negotiation documents, the other suggestion was to explain with greater care the purpose of the workshop and the expected outcomes since some of the African delegates were confused about this, a third suggestion was to reduce the days devoted to the workshop from two to one. The Initiative’s next such workshop prior to the ABS WG 6 meeting in Geneva is currently back on the drawing board being significantly rethought based on the insights gleaned from the Montreal workshop.