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ndonesia will send a team of negotiators to upcoming biodiversity talks in Japan to encourage nations to adopt a treaty guaranteeing benefit sharing from the use of genetic resources.

An Indonesian negotiator said that benefits could take the form of money, capacity building or technology transfer which would be awarded to the country of origin of the genetic resources.

“We are rich in genetic resources but receive no benefits if other countries commercialize them,” Indonesian negotiation team member Utami Andayani said.

Utami said many foreign researchers had taken plant, animal or microorganism genetic samples from Indonesia for research.

“But we don’t have a way to know if they have commercialized samples into high-value products such as cosmetics, medicine or food,” she said.

Under the new treaty, known as the Nagoya Protocol, countries providing genetic resources would receive fair compensation for the use of their biological resources.

Utami, who is also a deputy assistant for biodiversity conservation at the Environment Ministry, said that Indonesia would propose that the treaty be made mandatory for signatories of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

“We want a benefit-sharing scheme that will include genetic resources and also derivative products,” she said.

Indonesia — home to 10 percent of the world’s flowering plant species and 12 percent of all mammals — is one of the world’s most biodiverse nations.

Many Indonesian species, and more than half of its plant species, are endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else on earth.

But illegal logging, forest conversions and forest fires have placed 140 species of birds and 63 species of mammals on the threatened species list. Indonesia said it would send 70 negotiators to Japan to join the two-week biodiversity talks starting on Oct. 18.

The CBD has 193 signatory nations, excluding the US, which did not ratify the convention.

Ministers from 193 nations will sit together next week in New York on the sidelines of the General Assembly to iron out their differences on the issue.

Senior officials from CBD member nations are then expected to meet in Montreal in a working group to discuss the proposed protocol.

Indonesia will join 17 like-minded nations such as Brazil at the negotiating table to push for the adoption of Nagoya protocol.

WWF Indonesia activist Chairul Saleh said that the protocol was crucial for Indonesia to encourage sustainable protection of its rich biodiversity and its forest and ocean ecosystems.

“It makes sense if Indonesia struggles for the adoption of the protocol given its richness in genetic resources,” he said.

He said that local people who had long used genetic resources in their daily lives should receive benefits, too.

In 2002, CBD governments agreed to reduce significantly biodiversity loss by 2010.