Concluding Thoughts 317
and ontological diplomacy at work in different ABS fora, on the other. With
greater available space for local voices at the global level, IPLCs’ representatives
have challenged naturalistic Western ontology and its attendant nature regimes
(Escobar, 1999). As Hall illustrates, these institutional spaces are used as “hybrid
fora” and ways to engage in “socio-technical controversies” (Callon et al., 2011)
over ABS-related issues, which use a diversity of strategies. Hall points to two
mutually reinforced forms of “ontological diplomacy”, creating fault lines widening the negotiation space available to IPLCs.
This process of space making enabled the African Group to succeed in getting
community protocols adopted within the Nagoya Protocol and for social movements and Indigenous activists to promote and implement BCPs/CPs around
the world. This process has also unleashed creativity at the local level where
initiatives now abound: biocultural heritage territories (Argumedo & Pimbert,
2008), biocultural approaches to conservation (Gavin et al., 2015), and the indigenous, Black agrarian, and grassroots seed sovereignty initiatives that Garrett
Graddy-Lovelace chronicles in her chapter (Chapter 5, “From Obstruction to
Decolonization? Contested Sovereignty, the Seed Treaty, and Biocultural Rights
in the U.S./Turtle Island and Beyond”). She redirects our attention to placebased and plant-based mobilisations within the US/Turtle Island, a nation-state
that she sees as a paragon of “colonial settler racial capitalism and (neo)liberalist
orientation”. These significant biases, as she contends, are visible in the recent
US ratification of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food
and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), which might well mean the stalemate on such
critical issues as DSI and farmers’ rights will go on. Nevertheless, seizing on the
2019 Atateken North American Regional Declaration on Biocultural Diversity
and Recommended Actions,
7 she sees all the potentialities of the CBD as a “key
forum” wherein IPLCs have been able to “voice their claims and even actualize
their worldviews”. In turn, this has percolated through to the grassroots level in
the US and fostered several biocultural-based initiatives.
At this juncture, there is no doubt that the process described above is not
one-directional – from global to local – but perhaps best understood as a feedback
loop. The spaces opening within hybrid fora give IPLCs more leeway to accommodate their worldviews and needs and to negotiate new rights at the national
and local levels. What these new spaces trigger or sustain at the local level, in
turn, provides living proof of alternatives, perhaps marginal ones but inestimable
ways of life for the world to see. This is what the Constitutional Court of Colombia alluded to in its seminal Atrato River case: the “exemplarity” that Indigenous
peoples represent for humanity, in the “singularity and at the same time the
universality” of their existence.
8 These “exemplary examples” and experiences
subsequently feed back into discussions and negotiations within hybrid fora. The
Potato Park Biocultural Heritage Territory in Peru and its inter-community
agreement developed by six communities is one of these inspirational precedents
(local, place-based “exemplary” examples) used to promote BCPs/CPs by NGOs
such as Natural Justice and the African Group.
9 BCPs/CPs are now showcased
and ontological diplomacy at work in different ABS fora, on the other. With
greater available space for local voices at the global level, IPLCs’ representatives
have challenged naturalistic Western ontology and its attendant nature regimes
(Escobar, 1999). As Hall illustrates, these institutional spaces are used as “hybrid
fora” and ways to engage in “socio-technical controversies” (Callon et al., 2011)
over ABS-related issues, which use a diversity of strategies. Hall points to two
mutually reinforced forms of “ontological diplomacy”, creating fault lines widening the negotiation space available to IPLCs.
This process of space making enabled the African Group to succeed in getting
community protocols adopted within the Nagoya Protocol and for social movements and Indigenous activists to promote and implement BCPs/CPs around
the world. This process has also unleashed creativity at the local level where
initiatives now abound: biocultural heritage territories (Argumedo & Pimbert,
2008), biocultural approaches to conservation (Gavin et al., 2015), and the indigenous, Black agrarian, and grassroots seed sovereignty initiatives that Garrett
Graddy-Lovelace chronicles in her chapter (Chapter 5, “From Obstruction to
Decolonization? Contested Sovereignty, the Seed Treaty, and Biocultural Rights
in the U.S./Turtle Island and Beyond”). She redirects our attention to placebased and plant-based mobilisations within the US/Turtle Island, a nation-state
that she sees as a paragon of “colonial settler racial capitalism and (neo)liberalist
orientation”. These significant biases, as she contends, are visible in the recent
US ratification of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food
and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), which might well mean the stalemate on such
critical issues as DSI and farmers’ rights will go on. Nevertheless, seizing on the
2019 Atateken North American Regional Declaration on Biocultural Diversity
and Recommended Actions,
7 she sees all the potentialities of the CBD as a “key
forum” wherein IPLCs have been able to “voice their claims and even actualize
their worldviews”. In turn, this has percolated through to the grassroots level in
the US and fostered several biocultural-based initiatives.
At this juncture, there is no doubt that the process described above is not
one-directional – from global to local – but perhaps best understood as a feedback
loop. The spaces opening within hybrid fora give IPLCs more leeway to accommodate their worldviews and needs and to negotiate new rights at the national
and local levels. What these new spaces trigger or sustain at the local level, in
turn, provides living proof of alternatives, perhaps marginal ones but inestimable
ways of life for the world to see. This is what the Constitutional Court of Colombia alluded to in its seminal Atrato River case: the “exemplarity” that Indigenous
peoples represent for humanity, in the “singularity and at the same time the
universality” of their existence.
8 These “exemplary examples” and experiences
subsequently feed back into discussions and negotiations within hybrid fora. The
Potato Park Biocultural Heritage Territory in Peru and its inter-community
agreement developed by six communities is one of these inspirational precedents
(local, place-based “exemplary” examples) used to promote BCPs/CPs by NGOs
such as Natural Justice and the African Group.
9 BCPs/CPs are now showcased