101
The Bushbuckridge
BCP: traditional health
practitioners organise
for ABS in South Africa
8
by RODNEY SIBUYE, MARIE-TINKA UYS, GINO COCCHIARO and
JOHAN LORENZEN
Introduction
National and international laws and policies are gradually recognising the
importance of empowering communities
to ensure conservation. But the implementation of these ideals has proved slow and
uneven. With community-led conservation
also sustaining livelihoods and protecting
cultures, it is important for both conservation and communities that this pace is
quickened.
With a history of uncompensated bioprospecting, the Kukula traditional health
practitioners of Bushbuckridge, South
Africa are faced with both marginalisation
and an emerging ecological crisis from the
overharvesting of medicinal plants.1 But
they have staked their claim to rights
directly through the development of a
biocultural community protocol (BCP).2
Their BCP is a community document or
charter that asserts their traditional and
continuing customary roles within their
communities, and their roles in conserving
the natural resources and knowledge on
which they rely. The BCP identifies and
makes clear the challenges of health practitioners to external agents – such as
businesses and government – and calls for
them to respect their rights over their land,
resources and knowledge.
The BCP was developed through the
participation of members of the Kukula
Traditional Health Practitioners Association of Bushbuckridge (KTHPA). It was
supported in this process by the Kruger to
Canyons Biosphere management committee (K2C) and Natural Justice: Lawyers for
Communities and the Environment (NJ),
an international NGO working with
communities to affirm rights over their
resources and knowledge.3
1 Bio-prospecting is the use and commercialisation of a resource and its associated knowledge.
2 The Kukula healers are supported by Open AIR www.openair.org.za/ and are a part of the
Africa BCP Initiative, supported by the ABS Initiative (funded by GIZ), the Open Society for
Southern Africa and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
3 The Kruger to Canyons Biosphere management committee is a group of six individual
stakeholders supporting communities living in the biosphere and the continued conservation of
the region.