BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS - Portal do Professor

INTRODUCTION
By articulating the above information in a BCP, communities
assert their rights to self-determination and improve their
ability to engage with other stakeholders such as government
agencies, researchers and project proponents. These
stakeholders are consequently better able to see the
community in its entirety, including the extent of their territories
and natural resources, their bio-cultural values and customary
laws relating to the management of natural resources, their
challenges, and their visions of ways forward. By referencing
international and national laws, ILCs affirm their rights to
manage and benefit from their natural resources. They are
also better placed to ensure that any approach to access TK
or any other intended activity on their land, such as the
establishment of a REDD project or a protected area, occurs
according to their customary laws. Overall, BCPs enable
communities to affirm their role as the drivers of conservation
and sustainable use of biodiversity in ways that support their
livelihoods and traditional ways of life.
This book illustrates the application of BCPs to a range of
environmental legal frameworks. Part I focuses on the CBD
and ABS. Chapter 1 presents a bio-cultural critique of the CBD
and ABS and international environmental law in general,
highlighting their perceived strengths and practical weaknesses
from a community perspective. Specifically, we detail how
Article 8(j) presents a holistic vision of the protection of biocultural
communities’ ways of life and how, in contrast, the
Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing (WGABS) has
focused on facilitating only the commercial application of TK.
We argue that the narrow conception of Article 8(j) adopted
by the IRABS could lead to ABS agreements further weakening
communities’ cultural and spiritual foundations. We highlight
how the CBD has tried to curb free market excesses via the
development of instruments such as the Bonn Guidelines to
regulate users of TK and GR, yet suggest that the Guidelines’
lack of mechanisms to empower communities to continue
developing their TK and GR jeopardizes the local integrity of
the IRABS. There is a danger that the international intention
of ABS may falter at the local level, thus undermining its ability
to implement Article 8(j).
In Chapter 2, we suggest that the development of BCPs is a
means with which communities can respond to the challenges
posed to them by the incumbent IRABS. We set out the process
that leads to developing a protocol and, through examples
of BCPs, illustrate how communities are using them to manage
their TK, respond to various local challenges and promote self-
determined development plans. We draw on these examples
to argue that BCPs are a practical way for communities to
ensure that the IRABS generates the local environmental and
social goals it is intended to promote.
Chapter 3 illustrates how the concept of BCPs is gaining
international recognition. It draws on the negotiations within
the WGABS, as well as several subsidiary meetings held in
2009 between WGABS 7 and 8: the Meeting of the Group of
Technical and Legal Experts on Traditional Knowledge
Associated with Genetic Resources, the International Vilm
Workshop on Matters Related to TK Associated with Genetic
Resources and the ABS Regime, and the Pan-African Meeting
of ILCs on ABS and TK.
Part II of the book looks more broadly at other frameworks to
which BCPs can be applied by ILCs. Chapter 4 focuses on
REDD, making a case for the use of BCPs by forest-dependent
communities to address the serious concerns ILCs have about
the effects of REDD on their forests rights. Chapter 5 explores
the interplay between protected areas, ILCs and TK within the
framework of the CBD and the Programme of Work on
Protected Areas. Specifically, it evaluates the contribution
that BCPs can make to improving ILCs’ participation in two
types of protected areas, namely, collaboratively managed
protected areas and indigenous and community conserved
areas. Chapter 6 describes how payment for ecosystem
services schemes operate and their potential to contribute to
communities’ livelihoods, and sets out how BCPs provide
a means for ILCs to engage with and determine the shape
of the schemes.
Part III draws on the book’s overarching themes to look more
broadly at the meaning of BCPs for environmental law.
Chapter 7 traces the emergence of bio-cultural jurisprudence,
a nascent form of legal thought founded on the principles of
self-determination and respect for customary laws. Bio-cultural
jurisprudence challenges dominant notions of how to “protect
TK” and suggests a paradigm shift is required within the law
itself if ILCs are to be recognized as drivers of the conservation
and sustainable use of biodiversity and the generation of
culturally appropriate livelihoods.
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