BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS - Portal do Professor

PART II / CHAPTER 5
2. Bio-cultural Community Protocols and Protected Areas
BCPs can be of great use in the two governance types of
protected areas in which ILCs have a say in decision-making:
CMPAs, protected areas in which the governance is shared
between communities and other actors, and ICCAs,
protected areas governed by ILCs themselves.
2.2 Bio-cultural Community Protocols
and Co-managed Protected Areas
CMPAs can be defined as “officially designated protected areas
where decision-making power is shared between state
agencies and other partners, including ILCs, and/or NGOs and
individuals or private sector institutions”. 10
CMPAs are based upon a negotiated joint decision-making
approach and involve some degree of power-sharing and fair
distribution of benefits among all institutional actors.
Co-management arrangements involving ILCs often emerge
when territories under their occupation or management,
including ICCAs, are brought under the protected areas
network either at the insistence of the communities or
through government initiative. 11
BCPs can be a valuable instrument to empower ILCs to
participate effectively in the decision-making and
management of CMPAs. First of all, the process of developing
a BCP is an opportunity for the community to assess and
articulate the bio-cultural values associated with the area
under protection and to develop its own vision of its desired
future. The BCP can also serve as a basis for dialogue with
other institutions involved in the management of the protected
areas by demonstrating the contribution of the community’s
TK to the conservation of the area and clarifying the needs
of the community to access natural resources. Furthermore,
the process of drafting a BCP raises the community’s awareness
about its rights under national and international law, which
is essential to negotiating towards the equitable sharing of
management authority. Finally, a BCP can clarify the
expectations of the community for the sharing of benefits
arising from the protected area, such as tourism revenues.
BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS AND PROTECTED AREAS
A major challenge for effective co-management arrangements
involving ILCs is the recognition and co-existence of local
or customary and governmental or formal institutions, policies
and practices. By referring explicitly to the customary
governance institutions, management rules and values of
the community, BCPs can further facilitate the institutional
and inter-cultural dialogue.
In some cases, lands and resources traditionally inhabited and
used by ILCs have been incorporated into official protected
areas without their consent or agreement. In such situations,
BCPs could assist communities in demanding the restoration
of traditional land and resource rights over all or part of an
official protected area.
Co-management agreements are based in part on the
recognition that ILCs have TK that allow them to play a
significant role in protected area management. Ideally, these
agreements should explicitly identify the specific areas and
resources ILCs can access, and under what terms and
conditions. For effective negotiation and proper monitoring
of agreements involving TK, community ethno-ecological
studies are required. Best practice dictates that community
researchers conduct their own research, often in collaboration
with representatives of external agencies, and include a
variety of methodologies such as household surveys,
mapping, biological collections, and detailing of TK of
resources and landscapes.
Since the results of this community-based research will be
disclosed to some extent to collaborating academics,
government staff (such as rangers and wardens from park
agencies) and civil society throughout the course of
negotiating co-management decisions, a large corpus of
information about local beliefs, knowledge, practices,
and innovations will become publicly available.
Before any collaborative research begins, the community
must ensure some degree of protection of its intellectual
property and traditional resources rights through the
10. Kothari, Ashish, Collaboratively Managed Protected Areas. In: Managing Protected Areas, a Global Guide. Michael Lockwood, Graeme L. Worboys and
Ashish Kotari (editors). IUCN, Earthscan, London, 2006, p. 528.
11. Ibid.
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