PART II / CHAPTER 4
BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS AND REDD
4.1 Bio-cultural and Legal Empowerment
While this will not necessarily solve the problems related to
resource tenure identified above, it may serve as a basis for
International environmental laws and frameworks are
a deeper level of ILC participation, inter-stakeholder
inaccessible to many forest-dependent communities.
communication and engagement.
Thus, ILCs require time and information to consider their
options within their local contexts before they can be
4.3 Understanding What Conserves Forests
expected to make informed decisions within novel legal
and policy frameworks. REDD must support a process that
The relationship between ILCs and the forests they live in is
enables ILCs to reflect upon the inter-linkages and mutually
dynamic, and in many cases, their local TK offers great
reinforcing relationships between the forests and their
insight into how to ensure the forest’s conservation.
culture, spirituality and customary laws, and to identify the
By articulating aspects of their culture such as bio-spirituality
bio-cultural foundations of their ways of life in a format
and customary laws and practices that have helped conserve
accessible to other REDD stakeholders. ILCs also require
the forests, ILCs are able to directly refer to and call upon
information about REDD and their forest-related rights in
the international and national laws intended to support
order to better understand the options they have as
their traditional ways of life. A REDD community protocol
communities living in areas that may be affected by
can be used to express this relationship and examine the
REDD-related policy measures and projects. This will assist
forests within a greater ecological and bio-cultural context,
them in clarifying several things for other REDD stakeholders,
thus preventing the disembodiment of carbon.
including the following: the community’s membership and
traditional authority and territory; their customary laws relating
4.4 Free, Prior and Informed Consent
to sustainable forest use and management; their rights under
international and national law; circumstances under which
Only legally empowered ILCs can make informed decisions
they would be required to provide FPIC; and values that would
about how to respond to important decisions relating to the
inform any decisions taken as part of their FPIC. These issues
granting of rights over the forests in which they live.
are discussed in more detail below.
The empowerment process should include information
about international laws pertaining to forests, indigenous
4.2 Mapping Traditional Territories
peoples and other frameworks that support ILCs such as the
Convention on Biological Diversity. Rather than merely
An important element of a REDD community protocol
focusing on REDD, communities should gain the capacity
would likely be a mapping exercise through which the
to comprehend how various aspects of their lives are
community members would identify their traditional
regulated by a number of laws and to draw on those
territories and the forest resources they depend on using
most relevant to supporting their endogenous plans
modern technologies such as geographic information
for development.
systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS). The use
of mapping to help communities articulate their bio-cultural
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Responding directly to REDD, communities can set out for
The
other stakeholders their views on the mechanism and assert
documentation of traditional land uses can help formalize this
their rights to culturally appropriate consultations towards
information in a format accessible to Western science
their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to any REDD-
and enable ILCs to disseminate it to other REDD stakeholders.
related policy measures or projects. They can also go beyond
landscapes can be an empowering process.
merely stating that they do or do not want their traditional
Mapping exercises introduce communities to the use of
territory to be part of a REDD project by defining specific
modern technologies that could subsequently enable their
project elements to be included. ILCs can also identify the
participation in the monitoring, reporting and verification
values by which they will assess any projects in order to further
activities that underpin REDD.
clarify their rights and priorities to other stakeholders.
1 8 . See, for example, the Squamish Nation Land Use Plan in British Columbia, Canada, in which indigenous community members used a map to articulate their vision for
their traditional territories. Available at: http://www.squamish.net/aboutus/xaytemixw.htm. Accessed 10 September 2009.
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