With increased pressures upon the environment, and growing awareness of the need to engage broader populations in conservation efforts, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) has released a new series of papers which spotlight women activists involved in natural resource management (NRM) in Nepal, Indonesia and China, along with more general research on the intersection of NRM and gender in Asia. The compilation is entitled ‘The Challenges of Securing Women’s Tenure and Leadership for Forest Management: The Asian Experience.’ The research focuses on status of forest tenure rights and gender rights in the case studies considered, and illustrates that ‘exclusion and inequality on gender grounds are still rife and complicated by the intersection of cultural and social norms, economic pressures, and inadequate legal and institutional frameworks.’ Tuesday, 24 July 2012
With increased pressures upon the environment, and growing awareness of the need to engage broader populations in conservation efforts, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) has released a new series of papers which spotlight women activists involved in natural resource management (NRM) in Nepal, Indonesia and China, along with more general research on the intersection of NRM and gender in Asia. The compilation is entitled ‘The Challenges of Securing Women’s Tenure and Leadership for Forest Management: The Asian Experience.’ The research focuses on status of forest tenure rights and gender rights in the case studies considered, and illustrates that ‘exclusion and inequality on gender grounds are still rife and complicated by the intersection of cultural and social norms, economic pressures, and inadequate legal and institutional frameworks.’ Sunday, 22 July 2012
As biocultural community protocols continue to spread around the world as means of community self-articulation and legal protection, a new film entitled ‘Biocultural Community Protocols: Articulating and Asserting Stewardship’ has been released. The film was directed by Sanjay Barnela and produced by Natural Justice in collaboration with Moving Images, India. The film was funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation.
The film follows the experiences of two communities, the traditional healers of Bushbuckridge, South Africa, and the Raika community of Rajasthan, India. The film can be accessed here. Read more about community protocols here. The Bushbuckridge BCP can be downloaded here and the Raika BCP can be downloaded here.
Friday, 20 July 2012
Traditional resource rights (TRRs) are an integrated rights approach developed by Darrell Posey and colleagues in the 1990s. TRRs emerged as the result of an explicitly political legal project to more accurately reflect Indigenous peoples' and local communities’ views and concerns, and focused on integrating otherwise disparate legal regimes, instruments, and provisions. Posey describes TRRs in the seminal paper Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Resource Rights as constituting "bundles of rights" already widely recognised by international legally and non-legally binding agreements. TRRs, therefore, recognizes the “inextricable link between cultural and biological diversity and sees no contradiction between the human rights of Indigenous and local communities, including the right to development and environmental conservation.”
The paper entitled: 'Recalling Traditional Resource Rights: An Integrated Rights Approach to Biocultural Diversity' by Natural Justice's Harry Jonas and Holly Shrumm provides an overview of the concept and suggests that TRRs are worthy of reengagement and reconceptualization in the current context. The paper is available here.
The Earth System is the basis for all of the consumption and work undertaken by the 7 billion human beings who now live on earth. Through increased exploitation of the earth’s resources, the Earth System’s ability to sustain human existence is rapidly deteriorating. The fifth United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook (GEO), released this month, traces the state and trends of the global environment through a wealth of data, information and knowledge about the environment. It also links this information to potential policy responses and provides an outlook into the future of the environment. The GEO is divided into three sections. The first, the state and trends of the global environment, uses the drivers, pressures, state, impacts and responses (DPSIR) analytical framework to investigate the latest state and trends of the global environment under the themes of atmosphere, land, water, biodiversity, and chemicals and waste. The second presents an appraisal of policy options that show potential for enabling the accomplishment of internationally agreed goals. The final section considers options for a global response.
Natural Justice team members Johanna von Braun, Kabir Bavikatte and Holly Shrumm contributed to chapter five of the GEO which focuses on global threats to biodiversity. Natural Justice partners Bas Verschuuren (ETC COMPAS) and Ashish Kothari (Kalpavriksh) also contributed to chapter five.
Thursday, 19 July 2012
The World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) Intergovernmental Commission’s (IGC) negotiations on the draft text of an international legal instrument on the protection of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) continued from 13-17 July, 2012. The WIPO Secretariat announced that good progress was made on the definition of protectable TCEs, the identification of beneficiaries, and exceptions and limitations to the scope of protection. An informal expert group has been established to reduce the number of options in the text. The text will be shared with the WIPO General Assembly as a work in progress when it meets in October 2012. The General Assembly will consider the need for additional IGC meetings and decide whether to convene a Diplomatic Conference. There is still no consensus on whether the negotiations will result in three separate instruments on genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, or if there will be one combined instrument. There is also disagreement around the nature of the instrument(s), namely whether they will be legally binding or not.
While representatives of indigenous peoples were allocated a greater role in the discussions, they were not able to achieve the changes in the WIPO rules that they sought. The Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus released a closing statement expressing their disappointment that the IGC ‘has not substantive and concrete steps to ensure the full, equal, and direct participation of Indigenous Peoples in WIPO Processes that affect us.’
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
On 16 July, 2012, Greenpeace India held a panel discussion at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore to explore issues surrounding the nature of supplier liability under the recent Nuclear Liability Act 2010, as well as the disjuncture between the purpose of the Act and its proposed rules of implementation. The rules limit the right of recourse of the operator (ie the right of the nuclear operator to sue the supplier in case the incident of a disaster was due to the fault of the supplier such as faulty material with defects). Natural Justice’s Arpitha Kodiveri highlighted the reasons and consequences of such a disjuncture between the rules and the Act and engaged with the students on possible ways to bring this issue to light. The rules are being discussed in the monsoon session of Parliament.
The panel discussion concluded with few key observations:
• The proposed rules should be amended to give effect to the purpose of the Act to allow operators to sue nuclear suppliers in case of nuclear damage caused due to their negligence;
• Measures should be taken to create financial security measures and insurance facilities for operators so that they can bear the cost of a nuclear incident without causing suffering to the victims of such incident.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
With the threats faced by indigenous peoples and minorities increasing, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has released its annual “State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples Report.” The report finds that “the scale and severity of the threats to indigenous peoples and minorities have reached new proportions, due to an unprecedented demand for the world’s remaining resources.” The report “provides concrete evidence of how the generation of vast revenues from logging and dams, oil and mineral extraction, coastal tourism, fish farming, conservation parks and large-scale agriculture, is often at the expense of the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities.” According to the report, “despite a wave of new commitments from governments and corporations, the revenues from natural resource development continue to flow out of the regions where poor communities live, while the harms stay behind.”
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