Landmark Ruling for San in Botswana

In a landmark ruling delivered on January 27 by the Botswanan Court of Appeals, the Indigenous San were granted rights to drill for water in their ancestral lands. The San were evicted from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002 and have been locked in legal battles ever since in an effort to regain traditional rights to their land and resources.

The government capped water reserves during the evictions and has since given the go-ahead for the construction of luxury tourist lodges and a $3 billion diamond mine on San land, policies that sparked international outrage and have been condemned by the UN and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, among others. Media outlets, human rights organizations, and the San themselves have welcomed the January 27 ruling, which acknowledged the San as the "lawful occupiers" of the Reserve's lands. For more information, see this January 28 Afrol News article and the original Court ruling.

UN-REDD Consultation on FPIC in Tanzania

From January 24-27, the "African Regional Consultation between Indigenous Peoples, Forest-Dependent Communities, and the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) Programme: Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) Processes and Recourse Mechanisms" took place in Arusha, Tanzania. The meeting was the third consultation of the UN-REDD Programme that was organized with community representatives; the previous meetings taking place in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Panama City, Panama. The meeting in Arusha was attended by approximately 60 people representing African Indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities, NGOs, and UN agencies. The workshop provided participants with information on the UN-REDD Programme and various experiences with FPIC processes. Gino Cocchiaro (Natural Justice) presented on FPIC mechanisms that communities may wish to utilize if engaging with REDD projects.

Over the final 2 days of the meeting, participants drafted recommendations and guidelines for FPIC processes and recourse mechanisms, which will be used to inform the final guidelines to be adopted by the UN-REDD Programme. The guidelines drafted by participants included: ensuring that when “FPIC of communities are sought, the customary laws, procedures and community protocols of these communities are respected and complied with”; recommending an independent dispute mechanism to hear complaints under the various National REDD Committees; and the creation of an Ombudsman or Legal Aid Office within the REDD mechanism to specifically represent the interests of communities in REDD projects. Background documents and workshop materials can be accessed here.

On January 28, Gino was also invited to attend a meeting of the Pastoralist Task Force Group to discuss the work of Natural Justice and the use of biocultural community protocols (BCPs). Natural Justice was invited to return to Tanzania to synergize its work with Tanzanian NGOs working directly with pastoralists and to provide further training on BCPs.

Natural Justice Holds AGM

Natural Justice held its Annual General Meeting on January 25 in Cape Town, with the Sabah team phoning in via Skype. We discussed changes to the board, the annual report from 2009-2010, and organizational issues such as governance, strategy planning, finances, and monitoring and evaluation. The minutes will be posted shortly on our website. Thanks to two of our Trustees, Adele Wildschut and Saliem Fakir, for taking the time to join us and providing invaluable guidance!

FPIC and REDD Consultation in Arusha

Gino Cocchiaro (Natural Justice) will take part in the Regional Consultation between Indigenous Peoples and Forest-Dependent Communities from Africa and the UN-Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) Programme: Free, Prior and Informed Consent Processes and Recourse Mechanisms. The meeting will be held in Arusha, Tanzania, from January 24-27 and attended by approximately 60 representatives of Indigenous peoples and forest dependent communities. The meeting is the third consultation organized with community representatives on the UN-REDD Programme; the previous meetings taking place in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Panama City, Panama. The meeting will provide a background to REDD+ and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, and discuss the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) with regional and international examples. Towards the end of the meeting, the participants will refine a set of definitions, recommendations and guidelines for FPIC processes and recourse mechanisms that will later inform a final draft of guidelines to be adopted by the UN-REDD Programme. Gino will present on Natural Justice's experience of working with communities to implement FPIC.

IUCN-CEESP Sharing Power Conference

The first Sharing Power Conference was held in Whakatane, New Zealand, from January 11-15, hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP), Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa (a Maori tribal authority), and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi (a Maori tribal university). The Conference was about decentralization of the governance and management of biocultural resources, particularly in relation to Indigenous peoples and local communities, and exploring a new vision for development beyond the current mainstream economic models that have created and continue to perpetuate socio-economic inequities and large-scale environmental damage. Keynote speakers included Ashok Khosla, Elinor Ostrom, Winona La Duke, Professor Sir Sydney Moko Mead, and Julie Marton-Lefevre, and workshop sessions were divided into six streams.

The conference also hosted a high-level dialogue between Indigenous peoples and the chairs of IUCN Commissions and other major environmental organizations. Among other things, the participants agreed to review and advance the implementation of IUCN resolutions related to Indigenous peoples taken at the 4th World Conservation Congress (which, along with the Durban Action Plan and the Programme of Work on Protected Areas of the Convention on Biological Diversity, are often referred to as the “new conservation paradigm”). Key principles agreed upon in this new conservation paradigm include that:

• No new parks should be established without the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples;
• Forced resettlement should be strictly eliminated;
• Lands taken without consent should be returned to their traditional owners;
• Indigenous peoples should be involved in the management of protected areas and share in the benefits; and
• Community-based initiatives and processes, such as Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas, should be recognized and supported.

More information about the high-level dialogue and the rest of the conference can be viewed in these press releases by Forest Peoples Programme (FPP). When a conference report is released, it will also be posted on our blog.

BCP Planning in Sabah

Harry Jonas and Holly Shrumm (Natural Justice) joined the Global Diversity Foundation (GDF)-Sabah team in Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park from January 16-18. Among other things, they went through the latest written version of the Ulu Papar biocultural community protocol, discussed areas for additional research, and brainstormed ideas for future plans, inlcuding an online multimedia version.

ICCA Consortium holds EGA in New Zealand

On January 15, Harry Jonas and Holly Shrumm (Natural Justice) attended an Extraordinary General Assembly of the ICCA Consortium remotely via Skype. The EGA was held in conjunction with the IUCN-CEESP Sharing Power Conference. It included the adoption of revised Statutes and 2010 financial report, discussion of potential new Consortium members, and approval of members of the Consortium Steering Committee (proposed at the last General Assembly in Nagoya on October 24). Natural Justice will continue to be involved in revising the Statutes as appropriate, as well as drafting proposed criteria for new Consortium members.

Genes, Post-Apartheid Identity, and ICCAs - All at IASC 2011

Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom at IASC 2011.

On January 12 at the IASC 2011 Conference being held in Hyderabad, India, Kabir Bavikatte (Natural Justice) chaired a panel titled "Storehouses of Genes - Whose Property?" The panel had presentations on the microbial commons and challenges of forced introduction of genetically modified crops in Mexico and in China. The panel concluded with a lively discussion on the the challenges to sustaining the local gene pool commons. There was also an interesting afternoon panel discussion on "Boundaries of Authority, Identity and Space at the Interface between Formal State Law and Local Customary Law in South Africa". The speakers included representatives of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (University of Western Cape) and Law, Race and Gender Research Unit (University of Cape Town). The panel focused on challenges of identifying customary law and traditional authority in post-apartheid South Africa, where the apartheid state had reorganized chieftainship structures through the creation of bantustans and made the Chiefs accountable to the State rather than to their communities.

Also on January 12, Gino Cocchiaro (Natural Justice) participated in a day-long workshop on Indigenous Peoples' and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs). The workshop was organized by Kalpavriksh and presenters at the workshop included Ashish Kothari, Gary Martin, Tushar Dash, Neema Pathak, Terence Hay-Edie, and Fred Nelson. The presenters discussed a range of areas concerning ICCAs, including legal recognition, ICCAs as politically contested commons, and ICCAs as a mechanism to assert the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and presented case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A discussion on policy surrounding ICCAs will be held on the final day of the conference on January 14.

UN Decade of Biodiversity Announced

In its Resolution 65/161, the United Nations General Assembly has declared 2011-2020 the UN Decade of Biodiversity. The Decade builds on the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity and is intended to support the implementation of the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity that was adopted by Decision X/2 of the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) in October in Nagoya. The full text of the notification can be viewed here.

Pastoralism & the Commons at IASC 2011

On January 11 at the IASC 2011 Conference, Kabir Bavikatte (Natural Justice) spoke on the Policy Forum on Pastoralism and Commons: Beyond Sedentarisation and Sustainability. The Policy Forum had six speakers from different parts of the world, including India, Mongolia, and Japan, presenting a variety of perspectives on the current challenges confronting pastoralists. Kabir presented on the trialectic of new social movements such as the movement for the rights of livestock keepers, whose activism focuses simultaneously on the local, national, and international levels and had successfully generated a global political identity of livestock keepers. He also highlighted the importance of alliances being formed between Indigenous peoples' groups and pastoralist groups, as well as their ability to strategically use supra-national fora to lobby for rights that are then used domestically to force policy change. He concluded by emphasizing the importance of developing an ethnography of activism for livestock keepers' rights - in other words, to begin to trace and understand the interplay between local, domestic, and international struggles of pastoralists and its implications for the future of pastoralism.