utilise their resources.
Mr Wanyama stated that the entire
BCP development process has led to
greater cohesion of the community.
He explained that the way forward is
to encourage the use of BCPs in order
to create awareness about the rights
of pastoralists and small-scale livestock
keepers, not only among other
communities but also among policy
makers, scientists and development
workers.
The Bushbuckridge Traditional Health
Practitioners (BTHP) Bio-Cultural Community Protocol by Rodney Allan Sibuyi, South Africa
Mr Sibuyi informed the meeting that the traditional health practitioners started to organise
themselves in July 2009 and that the association has currently about 320 registered traditional
healers from across the Bushbuckridge area. They began the development of a BCP with the
assistance of Natural Justice. They decided to initiate such a process in order to protect their
biodiversity, their culture and their knowledge about medicinal plants. The healers that are members
of the association also agreed to pool their different knowledge together so that this wealth of
knowledge will not die.
The BCP was also developed to gain access and a fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising
from the use of local plants and associated traditional knowledge by third parties. The protocol
enabled the BTHP Association to start engaging in partnerships with companies which wanted to use
local plants and associated traditional knowledge for commercialisation purpose.
Before the BCP was developed, traditional healers encountered real challenges to access certain
areas and harvest their plants. Since the implementation of the BCP, a certain number of areas are
easier to access; however, some still remain difficult. The K2C Management Committee provides
some assistance in this regard. Mr Sibuyi noted that all these issues were encapsulated in the
protocol.
Putting their BCP into practice, the BTHP Association entered recently into a non-disclosure
agreement with Silk Collections, a locally based
business. Through this agreement, the BTHP
allows testing to be conducted on some of the
Healers’ traditional knowledge with the aim of
developing various cosmetics. The agreement
prohibits Silk Collections to communicate the
traditional knowledge to any other party and
ensure that should a cosmetic product be
found viable, a benefit sharing agreement will
be developed between Silk Collections and the
BTHP Association.
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