l Biocultural community protocols and ethical biotrade: exploring participatory approaches in Peru 169
Box 2: The AFIMAD BCP
• Who we are: AFIMAD and its member
communities.
• Local governance structure: how decisions are
made by AFIMAD and its members.
• Understanding of nature: how communities view
and value their surroundings, with a focus on the
forest, their local ecosystem.
• Use and conservation of forest resources.
• Current threats: focus on threats to the forest and
its components.
• Vision for the future: the communities’
endogenous development objectives.
• Rights: summary of communities’ rights according
to international and national norms, such as land
security, consultation and respect for traditional law
(full details included in a separate annex).
• Call to authorities and institutions: the
communities’ requests and demands to local and
regional government in relation to their rights, needs
and concerns.
• Framework for engagement with companies:
the communities’ expectations in engaging with the
private sector e.g. benefit-sharing, coordination
mechanisms, community development.
• Community commitments: e.g. sustainable use and
conservation of natural resources, responsibility and
quality in their work with commercial organisations.
dard. They matched various issues to the
corresponding principles of the ethical
biotrade standard, which also helped to
emphasise that both Candela Peru and
AFIMAD envisioned their relationship as
not just commercial, but a partnership working towards economic, social and
environmental sustainability.
Based on the BCP and ethical biotrade
principles, participants identified possible
elements of a working relationship, in both
an ethical context and as a conventional
commercial interaction. Participants represented both types of relationships through
role-play and then identified the elements
featured in each. For example, the participants considered that in a conventional
commercial interaction, companies are not
interested in conserving forest resources or
understanding how to appropriately engage
with the community, while companies
committed to ethical practices would be.
Representatives from Candela Peru and
the communities then separated to discuss
internally how they could contribute towards
improving their working relationship. They
focused on identifying specific commitments, such as initiatives for more
sustainable use and better exchange of information that each group could make in
relation to the ethical biotrade principles.
Participants then reconvened to discuss and
feedback on each other’s contributions. Identifying these specific commitments allowed
participants to comprehensively understand
the ethical biotrade principles, their role in
promoting them, and to establish common
goals as partners.
Participants then examined the key principles on which both parties wanted their
partnership to be built. These included
aspects such as transparency, trust, responsibility, honesty, good faith, open
communication and clear information.
Finally, participants defined next steps, based
on their collectively defined principles and
commitments. This included organising
further workshops to address pending questions or concerns, including:
• the usefulness of developing a conflict
management system;
• continued discussions of what constitutes a
fair price; and
• the importance of more training on product
collection and manufacturing practices.
Following the dialogue an agreement of
principles and commitments was established
between both parties. This document
includes the principles on which their working relationship is based, the specific
commitments of each party to advancing
work under the ethical biotrade framework,
and concrete next steps to follow up in the
context of exploring future projects. The
agreement is an internal document, held by
both the company and the communities. It
will also become a reference in the development and assessment of continuing efforts
of Candela Peru, as a UEBT member, to
implement the ethical biotrade standard.
As the Madre de Dios workshops closed,
participants were optimistic about continu-