324 Fabien Girard et al.
because it views community as a unified, organic whole, this vision fails
to attend to differences within communities, and ignores how these differences affect resource management outcomes, local politics, and strategic
interactions within communities, as well as the possibility of layered alliances that can span multiple levels of politics.
First and foremost, this observation has relevance for communities that can be
understood as Gemeinschaft, i.e. those “defined on an ethnic basis” (Parks, 2019,
p. 80). Admittedly, “internal recognition” appears less problematic when a community can self-define as a cohesive indigenous or ethnic group. Pía Marchegiani and Louisa Parks report that there were almost no discussions about the
definition of the community’s contours in the case of the “tracks in the salt”
community protocol, although a record-number 33 indigenous communities
located around the salt planes of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guallatayoc
in the Andes were involved. The communities were arguably able to coalesce
around a shared worldview and the ethical grammar of Buen Vivir.
At the same time, we must be wary of falling back into the romance of
community – as “small, harmonious, integrated, isolated groups” (Coombe,
2011, p. 84), whose members are indefectibly tied by common interests and
shared norms to manage resources sustainably. It has already been highlighted
that BCPs/CPs are rarely a mere codification of traditional governance systems.
First of all, it may be, for reasons most infamously illustrated by the San-Hoodia
case (Munyi & Jonas, 2013), that some communities were historically left unable
to maintain their traditional institutions. In these instances, developing a BCP/
CP is mainly about (re)building something that does not quite exist outside an
elusive collective memory and that in fact can only take shape through aspirations
and claims for the future (and this may sometimes prove insufficient – Bannister,
2009, p. 288). Second, it is hardly the case that having traditional governance
systems is enough for a community to automatically navigate the complex landscape of community-level PIC successfully. In particular, it is doubtful whether
benefit-sharing can be foreseen by traditional internal rules, given that, for
the community in most cases, access to genetic resources and TK constitute
an unprecedented form of engagement with external actors (Bannister, 2009,
p. 288). Therefore, more often than not, BCPs/CPs are “hybrid” tools (ibid.).
The hybridity is not objectionable in and of itself. However, it implies a sort of
reconfiguration or rebuilding of what has existed (sometimes for a long time).
Furthermore, whenever the BCP/CP lays down a new process for obtaining PIC,
which then translates into new institutions operating as gatekeepers, this necessarily raises the issue of power relations and potential appropriation by the local
elites. Sometimes, the emerging institution is a socially legitimate and “respected
political body” (such as a group of elders). This being said, sometimes it “is a
political body that is divorced from traditional practices and/or not supported by
the traditional knowledge holders of the community”, leading to the intractable
questions of “who has the right to speak for who” and “who can speak about
because it views community as a unified, organic whole, this vision fails
to attend to differences within communities, and ignores how these differences affect resource management outcomes, local politics, and strategic
interactions within communities, as well as the possibility of layered alliances that can span multiple levels of politics.
First and foremost, this observation has relevance for communities that can be
understood as Gemeinschaft, i.e. those “defined on an ethnic basis” (Parks, 2019,
p. 80). Admittedly, “internal recognition” appears less problematic when a community can self-define as a cohesive indigenous or ethnic group. Pía Marchegiani and Louisa Parks report that there were almost no discussions about the
definition of the community’s contours in the case of the “tracks in the salt”
community protocol, although a record-number 33 indigenous communities
located around the salt planes of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guallatayoc
in the Andes were involved. The communities were arguably able to coalesce
around a shared worldview and the ethical grammar of Buen Vivir.
At the same time, we must be wary of falling back into the romance of
community – as “small, harmonious, integrated, isolated groups” (Coombe,
2011, p. 84), whose members are indefectibly tied by common interests and
shared norms to manage resources sustainably. It has already been highlighted
that BCPs/CPs are rarely a mere codification of traditional governance systems.
First of all, it may be, for reasons most infamously illustrated by the San-Hoodia
case (Munyi & Jonas, 2013), that some communities were historically left unable
to maintain their traditional institutions. In these instances, developing a BCP/
CP is mainly about (re)building something that does not quite exist outside an
elusive collective memory and that in fact can only take shape through aspirations
and claims for the future (and this may sometimes prove insufficient – Bannister,
2009, p. 288). Second, it is hardly the case that having traditional governance
systems is enough for a community to automatically navigate the complex landscape of community-level PIC successfully. In particular, it is doubtful whether
benefit-sharing can be foreseen by traditional internal rules, given that, for
the community in most cases, access to genetic resources and TK constitute
an unprecedented form of engagement with external actors (Bannister, 2009,
p. 288). Therefore, more often than not, BCPs/CPs are “hybrid” tools (ibid.).
The hybridity is not objectionable in and of itself. However, it implies a sort of
reconfiguration or rebuilding of what has existed (sometimes for a long time).
Furthermore, whenever the BCP/CP lays down a new process for obtaining PIC,
which then translates into new institutions operating as gatekeepers, this necessarily raises the issue of power relations and potential appropriation by the local
elites. Sometimes, the emerging institution is a socially legitimate and “respected
political body” (such as a group of elders). This being said, sometimes it “is a
political body that is divorced from traditional practices and/or not supported by
the traditional knowledge holders of the community”, leading to the intractable
questions of “who has the right to speak for who” and “who can speak about