Conducting research in other countries and collaborating with colleagues internationally can enrich the careers of ecologists and give them opportunities to contribute to important questions in environmental policy and conservation. However, researchers working internationally must comply with a variety of requirements both of international agreements and local laws. The Nagoya Protocol, part of the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement that calls for sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources, aims to ensure that countries and indigenous peoples share in the nonmonetary and monetary benefits of biological research on their lands and waters, promoting conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

The Protocol calls upon each country to establish its own requirements governing access to genetic resources, with researchers needing to obtain prior informed consent under mutually agreed terms for each country where they work. It is imperative that ecologists become familiar with the implications of these requirements for their research. This special session will summarize these implications, based on an October 2017 workshop that ESA organized with NSF sponsorship. Participants will learn how to better navigate this shifting landscape, contributing both to the success of their research and to biodiversity conservation in the countries where they work.