The Kingdom of Lesotho features rich ecosystems and high species diversity, which provide critical ecological infrastructure, and offer many goods and services to rural communities that make up 70 to 80 percent of the population. The Government of Lesotho aims to support these populations to continue to derive sustainable benefits from its natural resources, particularly in the areas of medicinal, aromatic and ornamental species. It will do this by strengthening the enabling framework and capacity for implementing the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (in short “the Nagoya Protocol”).

The Nagoya Protocol is a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It provides a transparent legal framework for the effective implementation of one of the three objectives of the CBD: the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. The Kingdom of Lesotho has been a party to the Nagoya Protocol since February 2015. 

Certain aspects of access to genetic resources and benefit sharing (ABS), and traditional knowledge are addressed in some of Lesotho’s policy instruments and plans that call for conservation of biodiversity in support of sustainable development, but a more coherent and comprehensive approach is required. In this context, Lesotho seeks to create an enabling environment and equip stakeholders with the skills, capacity, and resources to sustainably harvest, add value to, manage, conserve, and benefit from genetic resources.

UNDP is supporting the Government of Lesotho (GoL) through the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture (MTEC) to develop a project, supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), that promotes conservation, sustainable use, and benefit-sharing, as well as research and development of natural products from such resources. This support is at an advanced stage, with a draft Project Document (ProDoc) in place. The ProDoc is proposing the following three interrelated components that will enable Lesotho to achieve above-mentioned ABS objectives:

1. Strengthened institutional capacity and regulatory framework to support the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on ABS.
2. Sustainable use and conservation of selected commercially important medicinal plants for the development of ABS products for the pharmaceutical sector.
3. Gender mainstreaming, knowledge management, and monitoring and evaluation.

Therefore, UNDP invites interested local experts to submit their applications for provision of services to support international expert leading development of above-mentioned project.