l Abstracts 17
NTA did not establish a true right to veto,
which would have given traditional land
holders the power to decide whether or
not to participate in the resource economy
on a case-by-case basis. It therefore
mainly provided a way of bringing
traditional indigenous land rights within
Australia’s resource economy in an orderly
way. Empowerment and strengthening of
customary rules and responsibilities were
limited by the predefined processes
provided for under the Act. The lack of
sufficient resources and expert advice also
limited indigenous peoples’ ability to use
the rights under the Act to their
advantage.
6. Changing the system from within:
participatory plant breeding and ABS in
China
Jingsong Li, Janice Jiggins and
Yiching Song
China’s first participatory plant breeding
(PPB) programme was initiated in
Guangxi, southwest China. It aims to
address declining genetic diversity in
farmers’ fields and to improve livelihoods.
As well as developing improved crop
varieties for farmers, the programme is
facilitating the negotiation of local
agreements by which farming
communities can benefit from sharing
their genetic resources and related
traditional knowledge with breeding
institutes. This work has strengthened the
legitimacy of farmers’ rights to benefitsharing, and is feeding into on-going policy
discussions on how to implement the ABS
provisions of the Convention on
Biodiversity and the Nagoya Protocol. In a
context where farmers face significant legal
barriers to securing their rights and
benefits, this experience shows how a locallevel experimental project, involving
formal breeding institutes, can start to
change attitudes, practices and policy
debates, paving the way for changes in
policy and law.
7. Decolonising action-research: the
Potato Park biocultural protocol for
benefit-sharing
Alejandro Argumedo
For decades, indigenous peoples have been
calling for a holistic and more sensitive
approach to their culture – one that values
and nurtures their traditional knowledge
systems and biocultural diversity. This
article describes an innovative
participatory action-research approach
with five Quechua communities in Peru,
where the communities worked with
researchers to develop the Andean Potato
Park’s biocultural protocol for equitable
benefit-sharing. The BCP includes not only
benefits derived from access to genetic
resources and traditional knowledge, but
also all benefits that come from activities
related to the direct and indirect use of
biocultural resources. The process of
participating in the development of a
research methodology and focus became
not only a process of empowerment for the
communities and their institutions, but
also enabled them to participate in
decision-making, particularly in defining
the content of the BCP. As well as
discussing this participatory process, the
article briefly outlines the provisions of the
BCP, and reflects on how the methodology
could be improved in the future.
8. The Bushbuckridge BCP: traditional
healers organise for ABS in South Africa
Rodney Sibuye, Marie-Tinka Uys, Gino
Cocchiaro and Johan Lorenzen
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. But
they have staked their claim to rights
through the development of a biocultural
community protocol (BCP), to secure
access to medicinal plants for healthcare,
prevent overharvesting and gain benefits
from commercial use. The BCP shows