CHAPTER 5
Bio-cultural Community Protocols
and Protected Areas
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Barbara Lassen, Gary Martin and Olivier Rukundo
1. People and Protected Areas: A Paradigm Shift
Significant changes have taken place in international
on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Programme of Work on
conservation policies in the last few years. There is growing
Protected Areas (PoWPA). It then evaluates the contribution
awareness of the role of indigenous peoples and local
that BCPs can make to improving ILCs’ participation in two
communities (ILCs) in the management of protected areas
types of protected areas, namely: collaboratively managed
designated by governments, and equally, of the importance
protected areas (CMPAs) and indigenous and community
of sites and landscapes managed by communities themselves.
conserved areas (ICCAs).
The contribution of these communities and their traditional
knowledge, innovations and practices (TK) to the conservation
and sustainable use of biodiversity in and around protected
areas is gradually being recognized. Yet this paradigm shift
1.1 Protected Areas and Traditional
Knowledge under the CBD:
Making the Link
from exclusionary protection towards inclusive and local
participatory management models poses many challenges.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) situates
Integrating governmental and private conservation institutions
protected areas as a central instrument to achieve in situ
and management practices with local values and customary
conservation. As stated in Article 2 of the CBD, a protected
governance of biodiversity is a complex task for all actors
area is “a geographically defined area, which is designated or
involved. It involves multifaceted issues of rights and
regulated and managed to achieve specific conservation
responsibilities, land tenure, contemporary and customary
objectives”. More specifically, Article 8 of the CBD clearly calls
knowledge, relevant institutions, and sharing of costs and
on each Contracting Party to:
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benefits. Bio-cultural community protocols (BCPs) can play
(8a) Establish a system of protected areas or areas where
a significant role at this interface of these issues, assisting
special measures need to be taken to conserve biological
ILCs to assert their bio-cultural values and rights to engage
diversity;
with protected area authorities and protect their TK.
(8b) Develop, where necessary, guidelines for the selection,
establishment and management of protected areas or areas
This chapter briefly explores the interplay between protected
where special measures need to be taken to conserve
areas, ILCs and TK within the framework of the Convention
biological diversity.
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1 . Barbara Lassen, Programme Officer, Implementing the Biodiversity Convention, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ); Gary Martin, PhD, Director
of the Global Diversity Foundation, and Lecturer, Centre for Biocultural Diversity, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent; and Olivier Rukundo,
Legal Research Fellow, Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, and Associate, Natural Justice: Lawyers for Communities and the Environment.
2. Kothari, Ashish, Protected areas and people: the future of the past, in: PARKS Vol. 17 No 2, 2008, p. 23-34.
3 . Article 8a and 8b, text of the Convention available at, http://www.cbd.int/convention/articles.shtml?a=cbd-08.
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