166 Giulia Sajeva
Protecting Indigenous Peoples and Welcoming
Local Communities
[T]he debate over who is ‘indigenous’ should not side-track the important
task of valuing local communities – whether or not they are indigenous.
The important task is to rekindle and enhance the spiritual and cultural
values that cultures have used effectively to conserve biodiversity.
(Posey, 1999, p. 4)
Darrel Posey was right. The spiritual and cultural values, practices, and knowledge of local communities and indigenous peoples, and their capacity to help us
through the current environmental crisis, should not be shadowed by tribulations concerning what a local community is and who is indigenous. However,
indigenous peoples have indigenous rights, while local communities do not.
Indigenous rights are neither fully respected nor completely implemented (UN
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019), but are recognized by international human rights law and entrenched, at least on paper, in the Constitutions,
statutory laws, and court decisions of many countries and regional organizations.
On the contrary, the term “local community” is still a vague and murky concept,
with uncertain contours, status, and recognition. Its legal subjectivity is tentatively
and timidly emerging in national and international law debates, and its rights are,
currently, just a shadow of indigenous peoples’ rights. So far, non-indigenous local
communities are welcomed into the conversation about collective rights, although
usually only when joining conversations about the protection of the environment
(Jonas, 2020; Jonas & Godio, 2020). The larger step to welcome them into the
realm of human rights – outside of considerations concerning the environment –
still remains to be taken. This consideration, as we will see below, is paramount for
the analysis of biocultural rights’ pros and cons.
Indigenous Peoples and Their Rights
The definition of indigenous peoples is not yet a settled dispute, as the very need
and appropriateness of having a definition are still widely questioned.
2 The 2007
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) – a benchmark
for the acceptance of the status of indigenous peoples as subjects of international
law – stresses the importance of peoples’ self-identification as indigenous and lists the
main characteristics that most indigenous peoples are likely to have.
3 However,
linkages to pre-colonial times practices, beliefs, and institutions remain the most
essential feature to qualify as indigenous and act as the main justification (foundation, raison d’être) for indigenous rights (see also Jonas, 2020, p. 21).
Indigenous peoples are recognized as holders of indigenous rights, which are,
mostly, collective human rights. The more important one is the right to (internal)
4 self-determination,
5 which is accompanied by many specific collective cultural, property, and social rights whose protection was acknowledged as essential
Protecting Indigenous Peoples and Welcoming
Local Communities
[T]he debate over who is ‘indigenous’ should not side-track the important
task of valuing local communities – whether or not they are indigenous.
The important task is to rekindle and enhance the spiritual and cultural
values that cultures have used effectively to conserve biodiversity.
(Posey, 1999, p. 4)
Darrel Posey was right. The spiritual and cultural values, practices, and knowledge of local communities and indigenous peoples, and their capacity to help us
through the current environmental crisis, should not be shadowed by tribulations concerning what a local community is and who is indigenous. However,
indigenous peoples have indigenous rights, while local communities do not.
Indigenous rights are neither fully respected nor completely implemented (UN
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019), but are recognized by international human rights law and entrenched, at least on paper, in the Constitutions,
statutory laws, and court decisions of many countries and regional organizations.
On the contrary, the term “local community” is still a vague and murky concept,
with uncertain contours, status, and recognition. Its legal subjectivity is tentatively
and timidly emerging in national and international law debates, and its rights are,
currently, just a shadow of indigenous peoples’ rights. So far, non-indigenous local
communities are welcomed into the conversation about collective rights, although
usually only when joining conversations about the protection of the environment
(Jonas, 2020; Jonas & Godio, 2020). The larger step to welcome them into the
realm of human rights – outside of considerations concerning the environment –
still remains to be taken. This consideration, as we will see below, is paramount for
the analysis of biocultural rights’ pros and cons.
Indigenous Peoples and Their Rights
The definition of indigenous peoples is not yet a settled dispute, as the very need
and appropriateness of having a definition are still widely questioned.
2 The 2007
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) – a benchmark
for the acceptance of the status of indigenous peoples as subjects of international
law – stresses the importance of peoples’ self-identification as indigenous and lists the
main characteristics that most indigenous peoples are likely to have.
3 However,
linkages to pre-colonial times practices, beliefs, and institutions remain the most
essential feature to qualify as indigenous and act as the main justification (foundation, raison d’être) for indigenous rights (see also Jonas, 2020, p. 21).
Indigenous peoples are recognized as holders of indigenous rights, which are,
mostly, collective human rights. The more important one is the right to (internal)
4 self-determination,
5 which is accompanied by many specific collective cultural, property, and social rights whose protection was acknowledged as essential