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6
and Sri Lanka. They set up the community
protocols website.2 Most recently, they coedited Biocultural community protocols: a
toolkit for community facilitators (see In
Touch, this issue).
Wim Hiemstra is an agronomist
trained in organic farming. He is coordinator of the COMPAS Network (COMPAring
and Supporting Endogenous Development), which has CBO-NGO-university
partnerships in 15 countries. The international coordination office of the COMPAS
Network, ETC COMPAS, is part of the ETC
Foundation in The Netherlands. It has been
developing methodologies for endogenous
development since 1998, building capacities in local communities based on their
own strengths and cultures, as seen through
their own worldviews. Thematic areas
include food sovereignty, traditional medicine, sacred sites and well-being
assessments. Together with CIKOD (the
Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and
Organisational Development) in Ghana,
the League for Pastoral People (Germany)
and Natural Justice (South Africa and
Malaysia), ETC COMPAS is coordinating
the African and Asian Biocultural Community Protocol programmes. Wim is inspired
by the diversity of cultures linked to biodiversity and the emergence of biocultural
jurisprudence.
María Julia Oliva has been Senior
Adviser on Access and Benefit-Sharing at
the Union for Ethical BioTrade (UEBT)
since 2009. She manages legal and policy
issues in the work of UEBT and provides
training and technical support on access
and benefit-sharing issues to its members.
Previously, she held positions at the International Centre on Trade and Sustainable
Development, the UN Conference on Trade
and Development and the Centre for International Environmental Law. She has
worked and published extensively on a
range of issues at the interface of trade,
intellectual property and sustainability.
Julia is a member of the International
2 See: www.community-protocols.org
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Commission on Environmental Law, and is
also on the Board of Directors of Intellectual Property Watch. She holds a law degree
and a Masters degree in environmental law.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the guest editors
and contributors to this issue for their enormous dedication and patience as we worked
to shape the issue and develop the articles.
It has been a learning curve for us all – and
an extremely stimulating and rewarding
one. Special thanks go to Krystyna Swiderska for first suggesting an issue on this
theme, and for her energy, persistence and
commitment in making it happen.
We would also like to say a huge thanks
to the UK Department for International
Development (DfID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
(Sida) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of Denmark (Danida) for their continued
support for the PLA series.
Spanish translation
We hope to produce a Spanish translation
of PLA 65 in the future to widen the reach
of the issue. This is dependent on finding
additional funding for the translation and
production of a CD-ROM.
Other news
Launch of PLA 64: Young citizens: youth and
participatory governance in Africa
We were delighted to be able to host a
launch of PLA 64 at IIED’s new offices.
Marie Staunton, the CEO of Plan UK –
which helped fund the issue – opened the
launch, outlining how this special issue was
initially developed and some background
of Plan’s work on youth and governance.
Caitlin Porter from Plan delivered an excellent presentation on the concepts of
citizenship and governance on behalf of
Rosemary McGee, one of the guest editors,
who was unable to attend. Jessica Greenhalf