SDI and Namati Release New Guide to Assist Liberian Communities Obtain Title to Their Lands

The government of Liberia is currently drafting new land laws that give communities ownership rights over their lands. To help communities take advantage of these new laws, the Sustainable Development Institute and Namati released a guide for Liberian communities entitled Community Guide: Protecting Community Lands and Resources. 

The Community Guide teaches communities how to go through the process of obtaining deeds for their land. It sets forth an overview of the process and informs communities of their rights to land and natural resources. It also includes a sample Memorandum of Understanding that communities can use to establish boundaries with their neighbors. More information on the guide is available here.

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Learning about intellectual property, community protocols and ABS

A training for indigenous peoples and local communities in Africa on intellectual property, biocultural community protocols (BCPs) and access and benefit sharing (ABS) is taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from the 23rd to the 27th of September. The meeting is organized by the ABS Initiative, in collaboration with Natural Justice, the Indigenous Information Network, the Indigenous Peoples Coordination Committee of Africa and hosted by the African Union Commission.

Intellectual property protections, such as patents, are often placed over developments that have originated from the knowledge held by indigenous and local communities. Unfortunately, these communities rarely provide their consent for such actions nor are able to share in any benefits that emerge from the developments.

Therefore, African indigenous people and local community representatives have requested training on the intellectual property regime, its linkages with access and benefit sharing and tools, such as community protocols, that can be used to protect their knowledge.

During the week long training, participants will share information on patents, geographical indications, plant variety protections, trade marks, the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and community protocols.

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Global Capital, Local Concessions: A Data-Driven Examination of Land Tenure Risk and Industrial Concessions in Emerging Market Economies

Using geospatial data from 12 emerging market economies (EMEs), this analysis by The Munden Project attempts to guide investors in emerging markets by shedding light on a difficult problem: overlapping land claims that diminish the value and viability of industrial concessions. The report refers to this as "land tenure risk."

From these datasets and an examination of research and financial information, the report concludes that land tenure risk is a statistically significant source of risk in EME concession investments. This risk extends across all land-dependent sectors, regardless of concession type and, to the extent they are even used, normal proxies for judging this risk are not likely to help. Furthermore, it is difficult to make a case for insurability against this risk.

Consequently, a different approach for addressing the risk needs to be developed. The analysis concludes with specific thoughts on this topic, emphasizing the importance of field-level data collection and contextualization within macro-level assessments, all of which can be done economically and in a way that matches standard due diligence procedures.

Download the Report

Scaling-up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights

From the 19th to the 20th of September, Gino Cocchiaro (Natural Justice) is attending the International Conference on Scaling-up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights in Interlaken, Switzerland.

There is growing acknowledgement that lack of community land and resource rights has become a global crisis that undermines our progress for social, spiritual and economic well-being. Natural Justice continues to work with its community partners, advise national governments and business to address these critical issues. The meeting in Interlaken will therefore serve to:

• Collect and share best practice on community land rights with a range of stakeholders, including communities, governments, civil society and private investors;
• Raise the profile of community land rights as a priority issues to shape key investment and policy processes in ways to support local land and resource tenure;
• Provide a forum for the new collaborations and alliances between the different actors and interests around community land and resource issues.

For more information on the conference please refer to: http://www.communitylandrights.org/

James Anaya on the "resource curse" in the global south

Professor James Anaya (United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) has written an opinion article for Al Jazeera entitled "Is natural resource development a blessing, a 'quick-fix,' or a curse?" Drawing on his experiences as a UN investigator, he argues that the resource curse is alive and well in the global south, with profits from natural resource extraction failing to reach the people and communities who bear the brunt of its environmental and social impacts, and that the heart of the problem often lies in lack of recognition of the rights of the Indigenous peoples and local communities living on the land.

Referencing the community land and resource rights conference currently taking place in Interlaken, he calls on the new UN Sustainable Development Goals to include recognition of land rights, including rights based on traditional use and occupancy, in order to address deep-rooted problems of contested ownership. For more information, please read the Al Jazeera article and download Anaya's thematic report on extractive industries and Indigenous peoples, which was recently submitted to the Human Rights Council.

Governance of Protected Areas - New IUCN Publication

“Governance of Protected Areas: From understanding to action” - a new publication produced by IUCN, the ICCA Consortium, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the CBD Secretariat, provides an important tool to help enhance governance diversity and quality of the world’s protected area systems.

Addressing an issue that was barely recognised until recently, the Guidelines “Governance of Protected Areas: From understanding to action” represent an important step towards integrating good governance into the conservation agenda. Over the past decades there has been a dramatic change in understanding about how governance of protected areas impacts on the achievement of their conservation goals. IUCN has defined four different forms of governance of protected areas. Along with the familiar state-run protected areas, managed by government employees, there are protected areas established and managed by indigenous peoples, local communities, ecotourism organisations, nonprofit trusts, private individuals, commercial companies and religious institutions, as well as a wealth of shared-governance arrangements between them. Finding the right mix of governance types within a protected area system and improving the quality of governance of individual sites remains one of the key challenges for bridging the implementation gap in CBD’s Programme of Work on Protected Areas, particularly in relation to effective participation, human rights, equity and benefit sharing.

Practical Approaches to Ensuring the Full and Effective Participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+: Assessing Experiences and Lessons to Date.

Cath Traynor (Natural Justice) attended the Joint Expert Workshop on Practical Approaches to Ensuring the Full and Effective Participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+: Assessing Experiences and Lessons to Date on 10-12 September at the Castle of Weilburg, Germany.

The central workshop question was “how can we encourage and enable the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+ decision making?”  Participants discussed local level experiences and examined national level participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+ country programmes. Critical issues that emerged included:

• The policy and procedures which govern the operations of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and UN-REDD Programme are distinct and complex, and although some harmonisation of guidelines has occurred, further streamlining in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is required.
• Safeguards operational guidance is limited and implementation remains a real challenge.
• Whether full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples is possible without recognition of their rights to lands, territories and natural resources.
• REDD+ processes need to take into account the customary structures of Indigenous Peoples and ensure that they are fairly represented on national REDD+ decision-making bodies and that they can meaningfully influence REDD+ processes.
• Institutionalising Indigenous Peoples participation through legal frameworks and enforcement could enhance participation.
• In some countries the REDD+ process has provided a space for Indigenous Peoples to enter into dialogue with governments and to call for a greater recognition of their rights.

The biocultural community protocols approach provides important lessons for local-level Indigenous Peoples participation and these could inform REDD+ processes.

The key messages from the workshop will be released shortly by the hosting institutions: the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and the UN-REDD Programme.

Training at Jakarta!

SOMO, Cividep India and Business Watch Indonesia have jointly organized an advanced training programme on “Business and Human Rights & Grievance Mechanisms” in Jakarta from 9-12 September 2013. NGOs and trade unions from Asia region like Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Indonesia, China, Nepal and India had participated in the programme. Sankar Pani of Natural Justice has participated and shared his experience of engaging with the OECD Mechanism.

The training focused on the use of different non-judicial grievance mechanisms and tools to address corporate misconducts and human rights violations. In the era of globalization, many developing and under-developed countries are getting significant international investments from various international and regional financial institutions like Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank, JICA amongst others. Sometimes these investments contribute or lead to the process of involuntary displacement, abuse of human rights and grabbing of resources restricting the access of communities to local resources. So as to deal with situations where international investments lead to human rights violations, each of these financial institutions have independent redressal mechanisms. Some of the grievance mechanisms used are the CAO (Compliance Advisory Ombudsman) and World Bank Inspection Panel instituted by World Bank to look into the human rights violations caused by business houses. In a similar fashion, the ADB has a grievance redressal mechanism to deal with the issues of human rights violations arising out of their investment in various projects.

The companies who are operating or have their parent company in Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (34) and 10 more non-OECD countries who have adopted the OECD Guidelines for Multi National enterprise have to respect the guideline for responsible business conduct. Anybody who wishes to file a complaint for violation of human rights against the brand company or its supply chain can file the complaint with National Contact Points where the company or its supply chains are operating.

However most of these non-judicial grievance mechanisms encourage mediation or negotiation between the parties and leave no choice for parties who think their rights are non-negotiable. In some cases the mechanism allows for compliance of guidelines and directs the companies to exercise due diligence of respecting the human rights in their business operation. More often the recommendation or directions or statements have no legal obligation on the parties. Similarly all the states have adopted the UN Guiding Principle on Business and Human Rights which is based on the Protect, Respect and Remedy frame work. This frame work mandates that the state protect its citizens against human rights abuses by third parties, corporate to respect human rights and victims to remedy against the human right violations. Though the UN Guiding Principles are backed by UN members they are not legally binding, have no grievance mechanism, no extra territorial obligation or direct reference to indigenous communities.

Despite several limitations, non-judicial grievance mechanisms are gaining acceptance for many reasons - less expensive, wider scope of jurisdiction like filing of complaints in all countries along the supply chain of the  company, prompt response from NCPs and quicker settlement where the parties have agreed to enter into mediation.

Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration Submit New Letter to EU MEPs Regarding the Implementation of the Nagoya Protocol as the European Parliament considers its Implementation within the Union

On 6 September 13, Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration sent an letter to the Members of the European Parliament regarding the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (Nagoya Protocol) in the European Union.

The original Draft Regulation on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization in the Union presented by the European Commission (EC) in October 2012 (Draft ABS Regulation) included a number of short comings, including the fact that user obligations were only going to be triggered by the physical access of genetic resources in the provider country post ratification of the Nagoya Protocol. When the Draft was considered by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI Committee) on 4 July 2013, the ENVI Committee adopted a number of amendments that addressed some of these short comings, including the modification of the scope of the regulation to include new and on-going utilizations of genetic resources (GRs) and traditional knowledge (TK). In their letter, Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration urge Members of the European Parliament to adopt the balanced proposal tabled by the ENVI Committee without further amendments.

The two organizations argue that if the ENVI Committee text were amended to revert back to access-based trigger points for user compliance, the European Regulation implementing the Nagoya Protocol would not apply to the new utilization of GRs and TK accessed before its entry into force, even when the use of such GRs and TK is newly initiated or the GRs or TK has been accessed illegally. They underscore that this approach would undermine the Nagoya Protocol’s principles in relation to the fair and equitable sharing of benefits, be inconsistent with an overwhelming body of ABS laws of provider countries, thereby increasing legal uncertainty for European users, and would lead provider countries to take extensive control measures at the moment when GRs are taken out of the country, regardless of the purpose for removal. Similar and additional arguments  were submitted to EU MEPs by the African Union on behalf of the African Group on 9th September.

The upcoming vote at the European Parliament in the coming days is key as it will set the path of the next negotiation phase. In order to ensure a greater legal certainty for providers and users of GRs, as well as to facilitate access to GRs for European users and consistency with the spirit of the Nagoya Protocol, Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration therefore call for the adoption of the proposal tabled by the ENVI Committee in its current form.

See also:
Joint Letter to the European Union Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety on the EC’s Draft ABS Regulation
Letter by Indigenous Information Network and Natural Justice, signed by 53 civil society organisations and individuals, 2013

Joint Submission to the European Union on the Draft Proposal on the Implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing
Submission by Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration on access, utilisation, and user obligations, 2013

The Rise of the South African Platinum Mining Industry and the Nature of the Post-Apartheid Order

On 11 and 12 September, Stephanie Booker of Natural Justice attended an international colloquium anchored by leading researchers, co-organised by the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) and the Review of African Political Economy entitled “Meanings of Marikana Colloquium: The Rise of the South African Platinum Mining Industry and the Nature of the Post-Apartheid Order”.  Over one hundred diverse participants attended representing different perspectives, including community members, NGOs and CSOs, union leaders, academics, government, researchers and students.

Held at the University of Witswatersrand, experts and researchers presented on a range of different issues with respect to South Africa’s platinum industry.  Specifically, there were robust discussions on the following:

• The political economy of platinum;
• Platinum and the ANC’s New Resource Nationalism;
• International Comparisons: Southern Africa and Latin America;
• New rural transformations on the platinum belt;
• Change and continuity in the platinum mine-labour regime;
• Regulating reproduction: the state, informal settlement and health and safety;
• The great strike wave: NUM’s crisis and new forms of worker organisation; and,
• Meanings of Marikana: implications for the post-apartheid order.

Sponsored by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Ford Foundation, the colloquium was a unique opportunity for experts and participants to engage in robust discussions on the rise of the platinum mining industry in South Africa and the issues causing and emerging from the events at Marikana on 16 August 2012.  For more information, see SWOP’s website here.

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