Federal Act
on the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage
(NCHA)¹

¹ Any per­son who in ac­cord­ance with the Nagoya Pro­tocol util­ises ge­net­ic re­sources or be­ne­fits dir­ectly from their util­isa­tion (users) must ap­ply due di­li­gence ap­pro­pri­ate to the cir­cum­stances to en­sure that:

a.

the re­sources have been ac­cessed law­fully; and

b.

mu­tu­ally agreed terms for the fair and equit­able shar­ing of the be­ne­fits have been es­tab­lished.

² Ge­net­ic re­sources are not sub­ject to the due di­li­gence re­quire­ment if they:

a.

ori­gin­ate from a coun­try that is not a Party to the Nagoya Pro­tocol;

b.

ori­gin­ate from a coun­try that has no do­mest­ic ac­cess and be­ne­fit-shar­ing reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments;

c.

ori­gin­ate from an area bey­ond na­tion­al jur­is­dic­tion of any Party to the Nagoya Pro­tocol;

d.

are covered for a spe­cif­ic use by a spe­cial­ised in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ment un­der Art­icle 4 of the Nagoya Pro­tocol;

e.

are hu­man ge­net­ic re­sources;

f.

as com­mod­it­ies or goods in trade are not util­ised as ge­net­ic re­sources in terms of the Nagoya Pro­tocol.

³ The util­isa­tion of ge­net­ic re­sources in terms of para­graph 1 means to con­duct re­search and de­vel­op­ment on the ge­net­ic or bio­chem­ic­al com­pos­i­tion of ge­net­ic re­sources, in­clud­ing through the ap­plic­a­tion of bi­o­tech­no­logy.

⁴ Ac­cess un­der para­graph 1 let­ter a is law­ful, if, by vir­tue of the Nagoya Pro­tocol, it is in ac­cord­ance with the do­mest­ic ac­cess and be­ne­fit-shar­ing reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments of the Party to the Nagoya Pro­tocol that provides the re­source.

⁵ If the re­quire­ments of para­graph 1 let­ters a and b are not met, users must en­sure that they are met sub­sequently, or must re­frain from util­ising the ge­net­ic re­sources con­cerned or from be­ne­fit­ing dir­ectly from their util­isa­tion. In emer­gen­cies, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide for a delay in meet­ing the re­quire­ments for ge­net­ic re­sources that are patho­gen­ic or harm­ful or­gan­isms.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late what in­form­a­tion on util­ised ge­net­ic re­sources must be re­cor­ded and passed on to sub­sequent users.