BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS - Portal do Professor

CHAPTER 2
Bio-cultural Community Protocols as a
Community-based Response to the CBD
Kabir Bavikatte and Harry Jonas
1. Introduction
In the first chapter, we critique the way in which the
international regime on access and benefit sharing (IRABS),
whilst purporting to implement Article 8(j), in fact only
focuses on the commodification of knowledge,
innovations, and practices (referred to here as traditional
knowledge, or TK). We argue that this poses a number of
challenges for bio-cultural communities who face serious and
ever-escalating threats to their ways of life: desperate
exchanges of their TK, which is perceived as tradable cultural
goods under this regime, for benefits (usually limited income)
without any corresponding respect for the inalienable aspects
of their TK. This can further weaken the very bio-cultural
foundations upon which TK is developed. We conclude that
chapter by asking whether it is possible for indigenous peoples
and local communities (ILCs) to assert their rights over their
TK and achieve good access and benefit-sharing (ABS)
agreements that uphold the spirit of Article 8(j) that seeks to
affirm a bio-cultural way of life. In other words, we question
whether it is possible for ILCs to use the IRABS further secure
2. Process and Protocol
The development of a BCP assists communities to overcome
the challenges presented in Chapter 1 in two broad ways.
First, it promotes bio-cultural and legal empowerment by
providing ILCs the opportunity to engage in a process of
reflection and learning. It allows communities time to talk
their bio-cultural heritage, strengthen their management of
local biodiversity and support the ways of life that generate
TK in the first place.
In this chapter, we suggest that the development of biocultural
community protocols (BCPs) are a means by which
communities can respond to the challenges posed to them
by the incumbent IRABS. A BCP is a protocol that is developed
after a community undertakes a consultative process to outline
their core cultural and spiritual values and customary laws
relating to their traditional knowledge and resources, based
on which they provide clear terms and conditions regulating
access to their knowledge and resources. We set out the
process that leads to developing a protocol and, through
examples of BCPs, illustrate how communities are using them
to respond to their challenges and promote their selfdetermined
development plans. We draw on those examples
to argue that BCPs are a practical way for communities to
affirm their rights to manage their TK and natural resources.
about the interconnectedness of the various elements of their
ways of life, including their landscape, GR, TK, culture, spirituality,
and customary laws relating to the management of natural
resources, among others. It subsequently facilitates a
community-wide discussion about their endogenous
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