Almost 20 years after the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we are still learning how to translate countries’ sovereign rights over genetic resources into workable laws and regulations that lead to the objectives of conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources.1 The international recognition of countries’ capacity to regulate the access to their genetic resources and the obligation of genetic resources users to share the benefits with provider countries represented a paradigm change to which we are still adapting. The vast literature on the development and implementation of international, regional and national access and benefit-sharing (ABS) regulations highlights the difficulties involved in getting such regulations developed in the first place and then known, understood and accepted by a broad range of genetic resources users who were used to collecting, exchanging and using genetic material without any relevant interference from public policies (Carrizosa et al., 2004; Glowka, 1998; Lewis-Lettington and Mwanyiki, 2006; Nnadozie et al., 2003; Pisupati, 2008).