Dear all,

Thank you for your participation. This discussion is now closed. The Chair will post his summary in the coming days.

Best regards,
Manoela

POSTED ON BEHALF OF HELMUT GAUGTISCH

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Dear AHTEG Members,

Thank you once again for your active and vibrant participation in this discussion. Through our collective effort and cooperation we have accomplished an important part of our mandate.

I have taken into account all the suggestions made during the discussion and, with the help of the Secretariat, attempted to reflect your input in both the questionnaire and the concept note in a comprehensive manner. The latest revisions are reflected in tracked changes in the documents attached to this message. The tracked changes highlight the modifications compared to the versions of the documents submitted with my interim summary on 21 May.

As mentioned earlier, since we have to work strictly within the mandate given to us by the COP-MOP, a few proposed suggestions could not be incorporated into the questionnaire. I will attempt to explain the reasons behind this and trust that I can count on your understanding:

- Adding the phrase “scientifically sound” in relation to the present and past experience with LMOs: the COP-MOP decision sets clear text for the testing and we cannot deviate from the text of the decision;

- Including a question on the experience of the tester: the response to this question could be subjective and difficult to measure or quantify;

- Including a question on conflict of interest: this could also be subjective. I hope that with the inclusion of the new question 3, the revised questionnaire is now more transparent with regards to the conduct of the testing


The final revisions to the questionnaire and concept note have been forwarded to the Secretariat, thus completing our task to provide input to the Secretariat for the development of tools to structure and focus the testing of the Guidance.

The Secretariat will develop instructions, outlining the technical details on how to participate in the testing and will soon launch the testing phase as outlinied in the calendar of activities (http://bch.cbd.int/onlineconferences/calendar_ra.shtml). The participation of the AHTEG and Open-ended Online Forum in the process of testing the Guidance will resume in April 2014 when we will provide input to the Secretariat on the analysis of the results gathered from the testing and recommendations for possible improvements to the Guidance.

In the meantime, I invite you to continue participating, through the Open-Ended Online Forum, in the discussions on our other tasks: the “Development of a package that aligns the Guidance with the training manual” and “Recommendation regarding the development of guidance on new topics of risk assessment and risk management”.

Thank you for your support and I look forward to continue working with you in line with the mandate entrusted upon us.

Best regards,
Helmut