ABSTRACT
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), although not organized explicitly as such, may be considered another example of a biodiversity prospecting consortium. The CGIAR is an association of the 16 international agricultural research centres (IARCs), the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), donor countries and countries who host the IARCs and collaborate with them. The CGIAR has no constitution, bylaws or officers, and so lacks many attributes of a legal entity (www.cgiar.org). However, the CGIAR holds copyright in its website and publications, and collectively manages some intellectual property for its member centres (such as the germplasm acquisition agreement (GAA) and MTA under the FAO Trust agreement). The CGIAR also sponsors system-wide initiatives such as the System-Wide Genetic Resource Programme (SGRP), which operates a website that indexes information about the collections of all the centres and provides a central place where people can request materials.
