At its meeting held in Montreal in March 2001, the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (ICCP) recommended that the Secretariat develop a toolkit to assist in the establishment of national databases based on the common formats for information (identified by the ICCP as one of the elements required to implement the pilot phase), and prepare guidelines and templates to assist in the input of data. The BCH Toolkit was developed to achieve these objectives. It is meant to serve as an informative and instructional tool to assist interested users with the use of the pilot phase of the BCH.

The toolkit is being produced on paper, CD-ROM as well as on web formats, and is available online through the central portal of the BCH pilot phase. The CD-ROM and web versions were designed as interactive instructional modules that simulate the pilot phase to facilitate learning about BCH information sharing tools.

Although the BCH toolkit was developed specifically with regard to the BCH, many sections may be of relevancy, particularly those pertaining to metadata and controlled vocabularies. Moreover, the technical sections of the toolkit may be used as a reference for CHM National Focal Points envisaging the development of interoperable information systems or joint national CHM/BCH web sites.

More information on the BCH toolkit is available at: http://bch.biodiv.org