In March 2004, the GEF approved a new UNEP-GEF project entitled “Building Capacity for Effective Participation in the Biosafety Clearing House (BCH) of the Cartagena Protocol” to assist Parties of the CPB. 139 GEF eligible countries participated in the BCH I project.
The BCH Capacity Building Project has the following three main objectives:
- To strengthen capacity in eligible countries through training of key stakeholders.The training will cover: i) Data entry and management; ii) Identification and access to information required for decision- making under the Protocol; iii) Access to, and registration of, information in the BCH;
- To create an enabling environment for Parties to meet their obligations for implementation of the Protocol by providing participating countries with computer hardware and software for data storage and exchange (with the BCH) over the Internet and by other means;
- To support further capacity building through the development and dissemination of an interactive computer-based training package.
The project will provide resources to participating countries for the following, as appropriate:
- Access to BCH Regional Advisors to assist in the design and development of the national participation in the BCH;
- Initial equipment set up, including, where required, intranet and Internet connectivity;
- Interactive guide to the central BCH portal;
- A BCH database template that could be used with existing computer programs to store data at a national level in the BCH common formats (the database will also provide functions to export data to the BCH central portal through various media, including Internet and CD–ROM);
- A training package and user-friendly computer-based training manual;
- Resources to hold national workshop(s); and
- Follow-up by the project team to ensure that training is useful (UNEP–GEF will operate a help-desk, for a limited period, to help countries comply with the Protocol).
