NIH-supported biodiversity project is first to receive Nagoya funding

January / February 2012 | Volume 11, Issue 1

An NIH-supported biodiversity project in Panama will receive $1 million as the first award under the Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund. The Protocol is an international agreement that established the ground rules for how nations should cooperate to access and share natural resources with potential applications including development of medicines. The Global Environment Facility, which funds environmental projects worldwide, announced it will make the award to a joint venture involving the Panamanian government, academic and research institutions, and private sector companies.

"We are very pleased that one of our biodiversity projects has been selected as the first project to be supported by the Nagoya Fund," said Dr. Flora Katz, Fogarty’s biodiversity program officer. "This is an important endorsement of the vision of our program, first formulated 18 years ago.  By drawing on the resources and capacity our program has built, the Panama site will be able to expand its efforts in the important areas of biodiversity sciences, natural product biodiscovery, and conservation."

The project will support increasing capacity of government and research institutions as well as promoting the conservation of genetic resources in marine protected areas. Matching funds were required for the award.

The Panama project is supported by the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) program, managed by Fogarty on behalf of funding partners at NIH, the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. The Nagoya Fund is supported by Japan, Switzerland and Norway.

More Information

• Read the full news release, GEF Announces Approval of first project under Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund, from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
• Learn more about the award-winning project Bioassay and Ecology Directed Drug Discovery in Panama.
• Learn more about Fogarty's International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) program.

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