320 Fabien Girard et al.
and Khoikhoi’s struggle in post-apartheid South Africa for recognition as an
Indigenous people also bears testimony to the centrality of historical land connections and land claims in the community protocol process. This BCP points
towards the “biocultural heritage” approach that, in the wake of the studies by
Posey and the IIED (especially in the case of the Potato Park, see Argumedo,
2008; Graddy, 2013; Swiderska et al., 2020), places great emphasis on securing
rights to land and territory as a precondition to any further consideration, notably IPLCs’ engagement with external actors.
13
Together, the chapters uncover significant commonalities cutting across the
divide between access law and non-ABS contexts. For instance, most of the
cases studied stress that BCPs/CPs rely on a detailed account of communities’
beliefs, lifestyles, and worldviews while emphasising their spiritual, cultural,
and reciprocal relationships with the environment. Most BCPs/CPs address this
question by circumscribing the collective under consideration, which might
include the non-humans with whom the people interact. For instance, as stressed
above, Miri (Margaret) Raven and Daniel Robinson insist in their chapter on
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples on the need to align BCPs with the
Aboriginal originary matrix, sustaining a continuity between both interiority
and physicality across a very large array of beings, including plants and animals
(as totemic species) (also see Robinson & Raven, 2020). In the Malagasy setting,
Manohisoa Rakotondrabe and Fabien Girard (Chapter 10, “Biocultural Community Protocols and Boundary Work in Madagascar: Enrolling Actors in the
Messy World(s) of Global Biodiversity Conservation”) unveil the embeddedness
of traditional crops in a symbolic system revolving around an ancestor (Deliège,
2012, pp. 187–188; Keller, 2008). It explains the Analavory farmers’ constant
obliviousness to the scope of their protocol, particularly the fact that it also covers
“genetic resources other than the Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) used for food and agriculture”. For the peasants, indeed, genetic
resources which are not PGRFA – i.e. are not cultivated – do not belong to them
but to “those with healing gifts”. The piece on the Khoikhoi Community’s Rooibos Biocultural Community Protocol, by Leslé Jansen and Rayna Sutherland,
also illustrates the foundational role of the relationship between the communities
and the rooibos plant and how it was reinstated or re-actualised through the
development and drafting process.
Finally, BCPs are very often inscribed into a political agenda or read as political
tools. BCPs/CPs give impetus to communities “to use international and national
law to support the local manifestations of their right to self- determination”
(Morgera, Tsioumani, & Buck, 2014, 223). More often than not, BCPs justify their existence and mandates based on existing international and domestic
instruments. One way to explain this is to re-emphasise the fact that BCPs/CPs
are, for their advocates, tools helping to “[…] uphold the rights of indigenous
peoples and other communities by filling a space at the nexus of international,
national and customary law and policy” (Parks, 2018, p. 88). International instruments and domestic legislation are drawn upon as a political means to signal all
and Khoikhoi’s struggle in post-apartheid South Africa for recognition as an
Indigenous people also bears testimony to the centrality of historical land connections and land claims in the community protocol process. This BCP points
towards the “biocultural heritage” approach that, in the wake of the studies by
Posey and the IIED (especially in the case of the Potato Park, see Argumedo,
2008; Graddy, 2013; Swiderska et al., 2020), places great emphasis on securing
rights to land and territory as a precondition to any further consideration, notably IPLCs’ engagement with external actors.
13
Together, the chapters uncover significant commonalities cutting across the
divide between access law and non-ABS contexts. For instance, most of the
cases studied stress that BCPs/CPs rely on a detailed account of communities’
beliefs, lifestyles, and worldviews while emphasising their spiritual, cultural,
and reciprocal relationships with the environment. Most BCPs/CPs address this
question by circumscribing the collective under consideration, which might
include the non-humans with whom the people interact. For instance, as stressed
above, Miri (Margaret) Raven and Daniel Robinson insist in their chapter on
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples on the need to align BCPs with the
Aboriginal originary matrix, sustaining a continuity between both interiority
and physicality across a very large array of beings, including plants and animals
(as totemic species) (also see Robinson & Raven, 2020). In the Malagasy setting,
Manohisoa Rakotondrabe and Fabien Girard (Chapter 10, “Biocultural Community Protocols and Boundary Work in Madagascar: Enrolling Actors in the
Messy World(s) of Global Biodiversity Conservation”) unveil the embeddedness
of traditional crops in a symbolic system revolving around an ancestor (Deliège,
2012, pp. 187–188; Keller, 2008). It explains the Analavory farmers’ constant
obliviousness to the scope of their protocol, particularly the fact that it also covers
“genetic resources other than the Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) used for food and agriculture”. For the peasants, indeed, genetic
resources which are not PGRFA – i.e. are not cultivated – do not belong to them
but to “those with healing gifts”. The piece on the Khoikhoi Community’s Rooibos Biocultural Community Protocol, by Leslé Jansen and Rayna Sutherland,
also illustrates the foundational role of the relationship between the communities
and the rooibos plant and how it was reinstated or re-actualised through the
development and drafting process.
Finally, BCPs are very often inscribed into a political agenda or read as political
tools. BCPs/CPs give impetus to communities “to use international and national
law to support the local manifestations of their right to self- determination”
(Morgera, Tsioumani, & Buck, 2014, 223). More often than not, BCPs justify their existence and mandates based on existing international and domestic
instruments. One way to explain this is to re-emphasise the fact that BCPs/CPs
are, for their advocates, tools helping to “[…] uphold the rights of indigenous
peoples and other communities by filling a space at the nexus of international,
national and customary law and policy” (Parks, 2018, p. 88). International instruments and domestic legislation are drawn upon as a political means to signal all