Biocultural community protocols for livestock keepers
Community led
Clear objectives
Informed
process
Not time bound
Value based
Collective
decision making
Managed
expectations
A good biocultural process (source Natural Justice, 2010a)
It is important that community protocols contain solid, and ideally quantitative, data and
are not reduced to political statements. Requests for access to land areas are most powerful
when they are backed up by evidence about how well the community has managed land
and resources. In this regard, community driven processes of data collection using various
forms of mapping, photos, video to portray land uses and oral histories, for example are
integral to a biocultural community protocol, and this takes time.
The development of a biocultural community protocol is a community process, with assistance from outside if and when required. The assistance can be in the form of training
on various aspects, such as on documentation, legal empowerment and facilitating meetings with government etc. Once developed, the protocol requires strong support from the
community and support organizations. biocultural community protocols, to be successful,
require a kind of solid, locally rooted, long-term organizational infrastructure and an ongoing social process. Biocultural community protocols can be considered as being both a
process and a product!
Danger of abuse
There is the potential danger that the process is abused by NGOs or other interested
stakeholders. They may enter communities and rush them into developing biocultural
community protocols without providing time for a proper intra-community consultation
process in order to produce a written biocultural community protocol, either for the sake
of it or even for ulterior motives.
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