BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS AS A
COMMUNITY-BASED RESPONSE TO THE CBD
PART I / CHAPTER 2
development plans and an assessment of common challenges.
• Samburu Pastoralists: The Samburu live in Samburu, Kenya,
With input from community-based organizations and NGOs
and are also pastoralists who have traditionally kept
with legal expertise, communities are also able to learn about
drought resistant breeds of indigenous livestock.
a variety of rights under international and national law that
Non-indigenous breeds introduced by a government
support their development plans and can help them to
program have fared badly during Kenya’s reoccurring
overcome their challenges. Drawing on specific laws, they
droughts and the Samburu have been negatively affected.
may also want to further explore how they would engage
• Vaidyas of the Malayali Hills: The Malayali Hills are in Tamil
with novel frameworks such as ABS or projects relating to
Nadu, India, and form a common resource for a number of
reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
Vaidyas (traditional healers) who share a bio-spiritual
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in developing countries (REDD) This may lead to subsequent
understanding of local medicinal plants and collectively
processes of defining culturally appropriate responses to such
conserve the area’s biodiversity.
frameworks, with a view to setting out for other stakeholders
the terms upon which they will engage with them.
• Gunis and Medicinal Plants Conservation Farmers of
Mewar, Rajasthan: The Gunis (traditional healers) work
together with farmers who grow sustainable quantities
The process of developing BCPs was different for each
of medicinal plants in Rajasthan, India, to ensure their
community with which Natural Justice worked, though
communities are healthy and their natural resources
generally they all engaged with five broad questions
are maintained.
relating to ABS and affiliated international and national
environmental legal frameworks, including:
• Bushbuckridge Traditional Healers: Bushbuckridge is in
the Kruger to Canyons UNESCO Biosphere Region in
South Africa and the traditional healers of that region are
1 . What are the community’s/ies’ spiritual, cultural and
ecological norms as well as traditional knowledge that
suffering from the over-harvesting of medicinal plants
by outside traders.
ensure conservation of biological diversity?
2. How do they share knowledge among and
between communities?
3. What are their local challenges?
Although each protocol is distinct due to the biological and
cultural diversity of the communities, the protocols referenced
below cover the same general issues, which include:
4 . How can the IRABS and concomitant national laws be used
by ILCs to ensure the protection and promotion of their biocultural way of life?
• A self-definition of the group and its leadership and decisionmaking processes;
5 . Assuming ABS is only a partial answer to the above questions,
• How they promote in situ conservation of either indigenous
what other laws and policies are available to the
plants or indigenous breeds of livestock and/or wildlife,
community/ies to realize the promise of Article 8(j)?
with details of those natural resources;
• The links between their customary laws and bio-cultural
Through exploring these questions and their corollaries, five
ways of life;
communities have developed BCPs from which we draw on
• Their spiritual understanding of nature;
below, namely:
• How they share their knowledge;
• What constitutes free, prior and informed consent to access
• Raika Pastoralists: The Raika live in Rajasthan, India, and
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their lands or traditional knowledge;
are the keepers of important animal genetic resources and
• Their local challenges;
custodians of significant ethno-veterinary knowledge.
• Their rights according to national and international law; and
Their ways of life promote the conservation and sustainable
• A call to various stakeholders for respect of their customary
use of local natural resources, and yet they are increasingly
laws, their community protocol and a statement of the
being excluded from traditional grazing areas.
various types of assistance needed by the community.
REDD is discussed in Chapter 4.
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