Second Meeting of the ARI-BCP

Natural Justice and the Law, Environment and Design (LED) Lab organised the second meeting of the Asia Regional Initiative on Biocultural Community Protocols (ARI-BCP) at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore from 18-20 February, 2013. The meeting was attended by ARI-BCP participants from India, Sri Lanka and Nepal working to support tribal rights, fishing community rights, the rights of communities affected by extractive industries, traditional healers’ rights and farmers’ rights. The meeting was supported by The Christensen Fund and the Ford Foundation. 

Participants primarily discussed how BCPs can be used in securing the rights of indigenous communities. They also discussed how domestic legislation can be used in preparing BCPs and how the experiences of BCPs can be shared across larger networks.

Review of BCPs for Pastoralists in India

Via ikrweb.wordpress.com/

Natural Justice partner Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan (LPPS) recently hosted a workshop for pastoralist communities who have drafted biocultural community protocols in India, with representatives from the Raika, the Banni buffalo breeders, Kutchi camel breeders, Jaisalmer camel breeders and the Kuruba shepherds of Karnataka attending. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson (League for Pastoral Peoples) prepared a blog post on the workshop. 

Per the post, “while the pastoralists unanimously underlined the importance of BCPs, it was also quite evident that a lot of uncertainty still surrounds the concept and that undertaking the process is by no means easy or fast. It requires time, resources and commitment for it to be of value. Nevertheless, BCPs are a crucial and even essential tool – for groups of marginalised people that traditionally have not attached that much importance to land ownership and are now losing out rapidly.” 

The blog post can be accessed here.

Bio-cultural Community Protocols Side Event

Together with UNEP, Natural Justice hosted a side event on bio-cultural community protocols at the Working Group on Article 8j meeting held in Montreal in November. The event was introduced by Alphonse Kambu (UNEP-DELC) and a book on BCPs by Natural Justice, published by UNEP, was launched by Bakary Kante (UNEP-DELC). A film on BCPs was screened and was followed by presentations by: Ilse Kohler-Rollefson (LPP), Hanwant Singh and Dallibai Raika (LPPS), Harry Jonas and Kabir Bavikatte (Natural Justice) and Lucy Mulenkei (Indigenous Information Network).

Picture: Harry Jonas, left, at the BCP side event