New Ordinance from the Ministry of Environment establishes the conditions to execute a non-monetary benefits-sharing agreement in cases of access to genetic heritage

On March 6th, 2020, the Brazilian Ministry of Environment (MMA) published the Ordinance No. 81/2020, which establishes the form of sharing the benefits in the non-monetary modality of access to genetic heritage, according to the Biodiversity Law (Law No. 13,123/2015).

The Ordinance contemplates templates and procedures to be followed for the proposition, analysis and signature of the Non-Monetary Benefits-Sharing Agreement – ARB-NM (“Agreement”), regarding the sharing of  benefits in the non-monetary modality arising from the economic exploration of finished product or reproductive material deriving from the access to genetic heritage.

The party interested in executing the agreement must send a draft proposal to the Biodiversity Secretariat of MMA. The deadline for execution of the benefits-sharing proposal is 5 years maximum and it must comply with the monetary and temporal parameters, considering the proportionality between the owed repartition amount and the maximum deadline established for the proposal implementation.

In cases of regularization, the proposal amount must correspond to the total amount owed due as benefit sharing regarding the economic exploration of finished product or reproductive material. The amount can be applied in one or more projects, according to the user’s intention.

For users that have already filed the finished product notification on the Genetic Heritage Management National System (“SISGEN”), it will be granted a 365 days deadline, counted from the date the Ordinance came into effect, to present the agreement for MMA’s analysis.

Finally, the Ordinance establishes that, once complied the obligations listed in the agreement, the Biodiversity Secretariat will issue the acquittance certificate, based on the information provided by the user and the direct beneficiary of benefits.