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Editorial
Welcome to issue 65 of Participatory
Learning and Action.
About this issue
Indigenous people and local communities
(ILCs) are struggling to defend their rights
over land and other resources they have
traditionally used and over traditional
knowledge they have developed over generations. For example, mining rights have
typically been granted by governments to
commercial organisations without reference to those living on and managing the
land. Similarly, ILCs have received few
benefits from the commercial use of their
traditional crops or medicinal knowledge.
This issue focuses on participatory
processes around two rights-based tools –
community protocols (CPs) and free, prior
informed consent (FPIC). These tools have
the potential to:
• help indigenous peoples and local
communities (ILCs) claim or protect their
rights over their resources and traditional
knowledge, using national and international law;
• build on and strengthen communities’
own rules and regulations for conserving
biodiversity and promoting sustainable
community-led natural resource management;
• help ILCs to negotiate agreements with
commercial organisations for access to
their resources and equitable sharing of the
benefits from the use of those resources,
e.g. use of traditional crop varieties, medicinal plants; and
• strengthen community cohesion, organisation and confidence to take action to
improve livelihoods and defend rights.
FPIC and community protocol-type
processes are being used to help claim
rights and negotiate agreements in various
biodiversity contexts, e.g. agrobiodiversity,
forests and mining, in Africa, Latin America and Asia – though not necessarily using
these labels. However, recent developments in international law in relation to
access to genetic resources and benefitsharing (ABS) have brought these
participatory tools and processes centre
stage.