l Community protocols and free, prior informed consent – overview and lessons learnt 35
their resources and land against development threats.
Box 6: Key steps in developing a
community protocol
Recognising the impacts of the process and
supporting community facilitators
• Identification of a local organisation and
community facilitator trusted by the community to
facilitate the process. Existence of a community
representative organisation will make the protocol
process easier. An FPIC process to obtain the consent
of the community to take part in the process is the
first step for developing the community protocol.
• Research to understand the community, its bioresources, customary laws and institutions. This can
be a time-consuming process, particularly if such
studies have not been conducted before. Ideally, it
should be conducted and facilitated by the
communities themselves. In Ghana, documentation
of cultural and biological resources by the community
was key to their revaluing these resources which
were taken for granted. It revitalised sacred groves,
traditional crops and built respect for traditional
authorities (Guri et al. ). In the Potato Park, Peru,
research on customary laws was designed and
conducted by community facilitators and formed the
basis of the protocol (Argumedo).
• Internal discussions and consultations amongst the
community to develop the protocol content on
cultural values, roles and responsibilities of
communities, customary laws and resource rights.
This step can also include broader reflection
processes on community priority needs and the
actions required to address them (Guri et al. ).
• Legal research on national and international laws
and bylaws that support the customary rights and
community priorities identified. This requires legal
experts and can also take time if such research has
not yet been done. A challenge here is to ‘translate’
the legal language to make it accessible to
communities so that they can use the protocol.
• Drafting, review and agreement by the community,
in the local language. External support will often be
needed for drafting the protocol, but the greater the
involvement of the community as a whole in shaping
its content, the greater the ownership and continuity,
and hence potential impact of the community
protocol. This may be a challenge in dispersed
communities – a travelling ‘roadshow’ was used to
reach as many people as possible in a protected area
in Borneo (John et al. ).
• Using BCPs for negotiation. Once protocols have
been agreed upon, they can be used for negotiation
with others, either individually or in multistakeholder platforms where community
representatives (ideally a broader range of
communities together) engage with formal and
state-level stakeholders and/or external parties. In
this negotiation process, while being aware of power
dynamics, the communities have ideally undergone a
capacity-building process to understand how to
operate in the process (Brouwer et al.).
Generally speaking, there seem to be two
types of protocols in this issue: those that
focus on achieving impact and empowerment primarily through use of the
document; and those that also see the
process as a means for empowerment and
change. In the latter, communities have
played a leading role in the design and facilitation of the process and the
community-level process has been more
extensive. In the former, external facilitators have tended to play a greater role in
facilitation, documentation and drafting. In
both cases, the process has improved
community organisation.
However, where community members
have been trained to take the lead in the
design of the process, in conducting the
research and facilitation, and in developing
the content of protocols, these processes
have been very empowering, building
capacity and confidence (Guri et al.;
Argumedo; Sibuye et al.; John et al.) This
has led to greater continuity and use of the
protocol by the communities themselves
after the process has ended – whether externally (Sibuye et al.) or internally
(Argumedo). Training community facilitators may require more time and resources.
In one case, it was not possible due to the
limited timeframe imposed by the donor
contract (nine months) (López and Heiler).
While communities may be empowered
and mobilised by the process, continuity of
support by an external organisation may
still be needed to promote impact once the
protocol has been developed.
Key steps in developing a community
protocol
There is no set formula for developing a
community protocol. The form it takes and
the methods to develop it should come
from and reinforce the local biocultural