BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS - Portal do Professor

PART I / CHAPTER 2
4. Lessons Learned and their Importance for IRABS and
the Implementation of Article 8(j)
4.1 Communities
The bio-cultural and legal empowerment that the five
communities engaged with lead to a series of important
points about the implications of IRABS and the
implementation of Article 8(j). As a result of developing a
BCP, the ways in which the communities envisaged their
bio-cultural futures became clearer. The importance of
Article 8(j) is elicited through the analysis of the linkages
between the biodiversity within which ILPCs live, their
livelihoods, their spiritual beliefs and cultural understandings
of nature, and the ways in which their customary rules and
practices promote conservation and sustainable use of
biodiversity. At the same time, witnessing the daily challenges
they face and their general marginalization, especially in the
case of the Samburu and the Raika, highlighted the limitations
of the IRABS. Paradoxically, the communities are extraordinarily
resilient yet vulnerable to ecological change and the
interference of external forces. Whilst they could benefit from
regulatory frameworks that can guarantee them increased
bio-cultural security, they are also susceptible to being harmed
by well-intentioned but badly implemented laws or ABS deals.
All five communities said they found the BCP process useful for
a number of reasons and felt emboldened to know that their
ways of life are considered important at the international level,
even if the national action required of signatories to the CBD
has not yet been seen at the local level. We draw on some of
the key issues from the above excerpts of the communities’
BCPs to highlight the importance of the development of BCPs
to ILCs in the context of the incumbent IRABS.
First, the communities had neither previously considered
entering into an ABS deal nor thought through the whole range
of associated issues that should be engaged with.
Some, such as the Bushbuckridge traditional healers and
Samburu pastoralists, had been visited by researchers in the
past, but at most felt disgruntled by the lack of feedback they
had received. They did not know that an international regime
is being negotiated or that each of their respective countries
(Kenya, India and South Africa) has domestic bio-prospecting
regulations. There is a striking disparity between the
BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS AS A
COMMUNITY-BASED RESPONSE TO THE CBD
importance that their TK and genetic resources is being given
under the international regime and their lack of awareness. It
confirms the need for community-lead processes to highlight
the importance with which the CBD views ILCs’ traditional ways
of life and to explain the rights and remedies available to
affirm them.
Second, each of the communities underscored their
dependence on the local ecosystems for their livelihoods
and explained how their TK is both an outcome of this
relationship and something that allows them to continue their
ways of life. The pastoralists’ ethno-veterinary TK, for example,
is crucial to the survival of the livestock on which their own
lives depend. This issue, reflected by each community in their
respective contexts, underscored the integral nature of TK to
ILCs’ lives. Their TK in this sense has an incalculable worth with
no tangible monetary value because they have never
considered it as a tradable commodity. Working with
communities to appreciate the worth of their TK, indigenous
breeds and plant genetic resources is not new, but we found
that such bio-cultural empowerment is vitally important in
the context of IRABS. This point is amplified when one considers
the different types of TK communities have and the overemphasis
that IRABS is placing on commercially viable
knowledge over knowledge or ecological understanding that
is more important for their ways of life.
Third, because the knowledge holders had received their TK
from ancestors and others in the community, the idea of
selling their TK or providing it to strangers from outside the
community was a highly novel concept. Communities found
it useful to approach new ideas such as the ownership or
transfer of animal genetic resources and TK from the
perspective of customary laws and practices that underpin
the usual community-based sharing of these resources. The
communities also emphasized the need for FPIC before the
use of any of their TK and genetic resources as being a part
of customary law, as opposed to something new that has
emerged from the international negotiations. This interestingly
highlights the fact that each community already has customary
laws and practices relating to the transfer of genetic resources
and TK within their own contexts in order to promote genetic
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