Biodiversity, the variety of life on earth, provides a large number of goods and services that sustain lives and livelihoods, and ensures ecological stability of the planet. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly or uniformly across the globe. Certain countries, lying wholly or partly within the tropics, are characterized by high species richness and more number of endemic species. These countries are known as Megadiverse countries.

Seventeen countries rich in biological diversity and associated traditional knowledge have formed a group known as the Like Minded Megadiverse Countries (LMMC). These countries are Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, South Africa and Venezuela. The LMMC Group, which holds more than 70% of all biodiversity, and 45% of the world’s population, is now well recognized as an important negotiating block in the UN and other international fora.

While this heritage entails an enormous responsibility for its conservation, it also provides opportunities for development to combat poverty, improve our quality of life, food security and health, and options for technological progress and competitiveness in the context of new applications of biotechnology.

The process of consultation among LMMCs began with Cancun Declaration in 2002, with Mexico as the first President of this Group, and has been carried through Cusco Declaration 2002 and Kuala Lumpur Plan of Action 2004. More recently, India in its capacity as the President of the Group organized a meeting of the LMMCs in New Delhi in January 2005. The New Delhi Declaration 2005 adopted in this meeting has helped sharpen the negotiating stance of the LMMCs especially in the context of the negotiations for the international regime on Access and Benefit Sharing, under the aegis of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).