Some 70 biotech players from 15 countries in Asia convened at Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre in Bandar Sunway, Malaysia for a workshop on Current and Emerging Topics Under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Protocols. This workshop was organized to assist Asian public researchers and other stakeholders in preparing for the UN Biodiversity Conference, which refers to three international negotiations relevant to agri-biotechnology that will be held simultaneously in November 2018 in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt.

This workshop was a joint effort of ISAAA, Global Asia in the 21st Century (GA21) platform of Monash University Malaysia, the Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre (MABIC), and Public Research and Regulation Initiative (PRRI), with the support of other international partners, held from August 14-16, 2018 and attended by biotechnology scientists, farmer leader, regulators, science communicators, journalists, and representatives from public and private sectors.

Prof. Piet van der Meer, a biologist and lawyer from Ghent University, led the discussions on the international agreements, as well as key topics such as national regulatory systems for biosafety, socio-economic considerations, synthetic biology, gene drives, risk assessment, and unintended trans-boundary movements. The resource persons for the workshop were Dr. Lucia de Souza from PRRI, Dr. Ranjini Warrier, former adviser of Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change of India, Prof. Kazuo Watanabe from Tsukuba University, Japan, Dr. Samantha O'loughlin from Target Malaria and Prof. Selim Cetiner from Sabanci University in Turkey. Dr. Craig Cormick from Australian National University, and Dr. Mahaletchumy Arujanan, Executive Director of MABIC led the session on communicating agri-biotech and biotech regulations.

Fore more details, contact maha@bic.org.my.