natural justice

NATURAL JUSTICE advises the African Group in the negotiations of the Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing (WGABS). As part of this work, we were part of a team asked to assist with the drafting of the African Operational text which was submitted, along with other groups’ submissions, as the basis of work for 7^th meeting of the WGABS, held in Paris in April, 2009. In particular, the African text included reference to “community protocols”. Before the meeting, NATURAL JUSTICE held consultations with ILCS, NGOs and users of genetic resources, and launched a booklet on bio-cultural community protocols at a side event hosted by UNESCO and GTZ. Over the week, the ILCs increasingly referenced community protocols and included them in the text they submitted to the Secretariat under compliance, mirroring the African Group’s text. Although the final text remains heavily bracketed, there were no delegations that explicitly opposed inclusion of reference to community protocols, and it was supported by New Zealand, among others, and remains in the draft international regime.

NATURAL JUSTICE recently attended the meeting of the Group of Technical and Legal Experts on TK, held in Hyderabad, India in June, 2009. Natural Justice submitted answers to the key questions and the key recommendation to include community protocols as a means to protect communities’ TK has been adopted in the report. We also attended the International Vilm Workshop on Matters Related to TK Associated with GR (July, 2009) and the ABS Regime as well as the Pan African meeting of ILCs on ABS and TK (September, 2009). NATURAL JUSTICE advocated at a number of levels at the Working Group on Article 8(j) and the 8^th meeting of the Working Group on ABS to promote the approach, including advising the African Group, partnering with UNEP to host two side events and releasing two books:

• Bio-cultural Community Protocols: A Community Approach to Ensuring the Integrity of Environmental Law
• Imagining a Traditional Knowledge Commons: A Community Approach to Sharing TK for Non-Commercial Research

The 9th meeting of the WGABS was held in Cali, Colombia, in March, 2010. NATURAL JUSTICE attended the meeting for several reasons. First, they advised the African Group in the negotiations. "Community protocols" remains in the draft protocol (UNEP/CBD/WG-ABS/9/L2), which will continue to be negotiated in July and forwarded to the Conference of Parties for adoption in October. Second, they presented at two side events on bio-cultural community protocols and participatory approaches to community empowerment. Third, they hosted consultations with representatives of indigenous peoples and local communities and the research sector about the possibility of a Traditional Knowledge Commons. They also circulated a draft report from the TKC workshop held in Cape Town in December, 2009.

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