ABSTRACT
The objective of the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Supplementary Protocol), according to its Article 1, is ‘to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health, by providing international rules and procedures in the field of liability and redress relating to living modified organisms’. It is, therefore, a legal instrument that sets the minimum international standards on liability and redress for damage to the environment resulting from the use of living modified organisms (LMOs). Although conceived as a legal document, the nature of its subject matter is highly technical and scientific, and in some instances this fact guided the course of the decisions that were taken during the negotiations. However, the lack of a thorough and common understanding on some of these technical issues also contributed, in some cases, to a lack of agreement, such as in the case of whether the term ‘products thereof’ was to be included in the document or not.
