Shuttleworth Foundation » Kabir Bavikatte

SDI and Namati Release New Guide to Assist Liberian Communities Obtain Title to Their Lands

Holly — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 19:00:00 +0000

The government of Liberia is currently drafting new land laws that give communities ownership rights over their lands. To help communities take advantage of these new laws, the Sustainable Development Institute and Namati released a guide for Liberian communities entitled Community Guide: Protecting Community Lands and Resources.

The Community Guide teaches communities how to go through the process of obtaining deeds for their land. It sets forth an overview of the process and informs communities of their rights to land and natural resources. It also includes a sample Memorandum of Understanding that communities can use to establish boundaries with their neighbors. More information on the guide is available here.

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Learning about intellectual property, community protocols and ABS

Holly — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 18:07:00 +0000

A training for indigenous peoples and local communities in Africa on intellectual property, biocultural community protocols (BCPs) and access and benefit sharing (ABS) is taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from the 23rd to the 27th of September. The meeting is organized by the ABS Initiative, in collaboration with Natural Justice, the Indigenous Information Network, the Indigenous Peoples Coordination Committee of Africa and hosted by the African Union Commission.

Intellectual property protections, such as patents, are often placed over developments that have originated from the knowledge held by indigenous and local communities. Unfortunately, these communities rarely provide their consent for such actions nor are able to share in any benefits that emerge from the developments.

Therefore, African indigenous people and local community representatives have requested training on the intellectual property regime, its linkages with access and benefit sharing and tools, such as community protocols, that can be used to protect their knowledge.

During the week long training, participants will share information on patents, geographical indications, plant variety protections, trade marks, the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and community protocols.

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Global Capital, Local Concessions: A Data-Driven Examination of Land Tenure Risk and Industrial Concessions in Emerging Market Economies

Holly — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:59:00 +0000

Using geospatial data from 12 emerging market economies (EMEs), this analysis by The Munden Project attempts to guide investors in emerging markets by shedding light on a difficult problem: overlapping land claims that diminish the value and viability of industrial concessions. The report refers to this as “land tenure risk.”

From these datasets and an examination of research and financial information, the report concludes that land tenure risk is a statistically significant source of risk in EME concession investments. This risk extends across all land-dependent sectors, regardless of concession type and, to the extent they are even used, normal proxies for judging this risk are not likely to help. Furthermore, it is difficult to make a case for insurability against this risk.

Consequently, a different approach for addressing the risk needs to be developed. The analysis concludes with specific thoughts on this topic, emphasizing the importance of field-level data collection and contextualization within macro-level assessments, all of which can be done economically and in a way that matches standard due diligence procedures.

Download the Report

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Scaling-up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights

Holly — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 01:37:00 +0000

From the 19th to the 20th of September, Gino Cocchiaro (Natural Justice) is attending the International Conference on Scaling-up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights in Interlaken, Switzerland.

There is growing acknowledgement that lack of community land and resource rights has become a global crisis that undermines our progress for social, spiritual and economic well-being. Natural Justice continues to work with its community partners, advise national governments and business to address these critical issues. The meeting in Interlaken will therefore serve to:

Collect and share best practice on community land rights with a range of stakeholders, including communities, governments, civil society and private investors;
Raise the profile of community land rights as a priority issues to shape key investment and policy processes in ways to support local land and resource tenure;
Provide a forum for the new collaborations and alliances between the different actors and interests around community land and resource issues.

For more information on the conference please refer to: http://www.communitylandrights.org/

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James Anaya on the “resource curse” in the global south

Holly — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 01:24:00 +0000

Professor James Anaya (United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) has written an opinion article for Al Jazeera entitled “Is natural resource development a blessing, a ‘quick-fix,’ or a curse?” Drawing on his experiences as a UN investigator, he argues that the resource curse is alive and well in the global south, with profits from natural resource extraction failing to reach the people and communities who bear the brunt of its environmental and social impacts, and that the heart of the problem often lies in lack of recognition of the rights of the Indigenous peoples and local communities living on the land.

Referencing the community land and resource rights conference currently taking place in Interlaken, he calls on the new UN Sustainable Development Goals to include recognition of land rights, including rights based on traditional use and occupancy, in order to address deep-rooted problems of contested ownership. For more information, please read the Al Jazeera article and download Anaya’s thematic report on extractive industries and Indigenous peoples, which was recently submitted to the Human Rights Council.

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Practical Approaches to Ensuring the Full and Effective Participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+: Assessing Experiences and Lessons to Date.

Holly — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 01:58:00 +0000

Cath Traynor (Natural Justice) attended the Joint Expert Workshop on Practical Approaches to Ensuring the Full and Effective Participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+: Assessing Experiences and Lessons to Date on 10-12 September at the Castle of Weilburg, Germany.

The central workshop question was “how can we encourage and enable the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+ decision making?” Participants discussed local level experiences and examined national level participation of Indigenous Peoples in REDD+ country programmes. Critical issues that emerged included:

The policy and procedures which govern the operations of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and UN-REDD Programme are distinct and complex, and although some harmonisation of guidelines has occurred, further streamlining in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is required.
Safeguards operational guidance is limited and implementation remains a real challenge.
Whether full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples is possible without recognition of their rights to lands, territories and natural resources.
REDD+ processes need to take into account the customary structures of Indigenous Peoples and ensure that they are fairly represented on national REDD+ decision-making bodies and that they can meaningfully influence REDD+ processes.
Institutionalising Indigenous Peoples participation through legal frameworks and enforcement could enhance participation.
In some countries the REDD+ process has provided a space for Indigenous Peoples to enter into dialogue with governments and to call for a greater recognition of their rights.

The biocultural community protocols approach provides important lessons for local-level Indigenous Peoples participation and these could inform REDD+ processes.

The key messages from the workshop will be released shortly by the hosting institutions: the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and the UN-REDD Programme.

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Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration Submit New Letter to EU MEPs Regarding the Implementation of the Nagoya Protocol as the European Parliament considers its Implementation within the Union

Holly — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 19:02:00 +0000

On 6 September 13, Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration sent an letter to the Members of the European Parliament regarding the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (Nagoya Protocol) in the European Union.

The original Draft Regulation on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization in the Union presented by the European Commission (EC) in October 2012 (Draft ABS Regulation) included a number of short comings, including the fact that user obligations were only going to be triggered by the physical access of genetic resources in the provider country post ratification of the Nagoya Protocol. When the Draft was considered by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI Committee) on 4 July 2013, the ENVI Committee adopted a number of amendments that addressed some of these short comings, including the modification of the scope of the regulation to include new and on-going utilizations of genetic resources (GRs) and traditional knowledge (TK). In their letter, Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration urge Members of the European Parliament to adopt the balanced proposal tabled by the ENVI Committee without further amendments.

The two organizations argue that if the ENVI Committee text were amended to revert back to access-based trigger points for user compliance, the European Regulation implementing the Nagoya Protocol would not apply to the new utilization of GRs and TK accessed before its entry into force, even when the use of such GRs and TK is newly initiated or the GRs or TK has been accessed illegally. They underscore that this approach would undermine the Nagoya Protocol’s principles in relation to the fair and equitable sharing of benefits, be inconsistent with an overwhelming body of ABS laws of provider countries, thereby increasing legal uncertainty for European users, and would lead provider countries to take extensive control measures at the moment when GRs are taken out of the country, regardless of the purpose for removal. Similar and additional arguments were submitted to EU MEPs by the African Union on behalf of the African Group on 9th September.

The upcoming vote at the European Parliament in the coming days is key as it will set the path of the next negotiation phase. In order to ensure a greater legal certainty for providers and users of GRs, as well as to facilitate access to GRs for European users and consistency with the spirit of the Nagoya Protocol, Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration therefore call for the adoption of the proposal tabled by the ENVI Committee in its current form.

See also:
Joint Letter to the European Union Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety on the EC’s Draft ABS Regulation
Letter by Indigenous Information Network and Natural Justice, signed by 53 civil society organisations and individuals, 2013

Joint Submission to the European Union on the Draft Proposal on the Implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing
Submission by Natural Justice and the Berne Declaration on access, utilisation, and user obligations, 2013

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The Rise of the South African Platinum Mining Industry and the Nature of the Post-Apartheid Order

Holly — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:07:00 +0000

On 11 and 12 September, Stephanie Booker of Natural Justice attended an international colloquium anchored by leading researchers, co-organised by the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) and the Review of African Political Economy entitled “Meanings of Marikana Colloquium: The Rise of the South African Platinum Mining Industry and the Nature of the Post-Apartheid Order”. Over one hundred diverse participants attended representing different perspectives, including community members, NGOs and CSOs, union leaders, academics, government, researchers and students.

Held at the University of Witswatersrand, experts and researchers presented on a range of different issues with respect to South Africa’s platinum industry. Specifically, there were robust discussions on the following:

The political economy of platinum;
Platinum and the ANC’s New Resource Nationalism;
International Comparisons: Southern Africa and Latin America;
New rural transformations on the platinum belt;
Change and continuity in the platinum mine-labour regime;
Regulating reproduction: the state, informal settlement and health and safety;
The great strike wave: NUM’s crisis and new forms of worker organisation; and,
Meanings of Marikana: implications for the post-apartheid order.

Sponsored by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Ford Foundation, the colloquium was a unique opportunity for experts and participants to engage in robust discussions on the rise of the platinum mining industry in South Africa and the issues causing and emerging from the events at Marikana on 16 August 2012. For more information, see SWOP’s website here.

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Natural Justice attends the Zimbabwe Alternative Mining Indaba

Holly — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 18:19:00 +0000

Stephanie Booker of Natural Justice attended the 2nd Zimbabwe Alternative Mining Indaba (ZAMI) in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 10th -11th September 2013.

Hosted by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), the Environmental Justice Network (EJN), the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) and the Chiadzwa Community Development Trust (CCDT), the theme of the ZAMI was “Community Rights, the key to Empowerment”. Held parallel to the annual Zimbabwe Mining Indaba, the ZAMI was attended by over 100 participants of civil society organisations, non-government organisations, community-based organisations including the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and Women in Law Southern Africa, as well as and chiefs and members of communities affected by mining from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia.

Participants discussed key issues such as:

Ongoing and envisaged reforms in the mining sector;
The impacts of mining on women;
The impacts of mining on communities and strategies being used to advance community interests;
The Kimberly Certification Scheme;
Opportunities and challenges under the new Constitution;
The African Mining Vision;
Mining taxation and illicit financial flows.

Participants were also privileged to hear direct experiences from community members themselves, including the impacts of mining on families, general health, the health of pregnant women and water sources.

The Zimbabwe Alternative Mining Indaba featured in Zimbabwean Daily News here. In it, ZELA Programme Officer, Shamiso Mtisi notes that whilst the extractives sector is one of the most important sources of a nation’s income with great potential to contribute to economic development, the costs of extractive industries have been socialised, with a huge impact on communities.

The Declaration formulated by the Zimbabwe Alternative Mining Indaba 2013 can be found here.

For more information and for regular updates on mining issues in Zimbabwe, like ZELA’s facebook page.

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Self-evaluation workshop of civil society actors and indigenous peoples on REDD+ in DRC

Holly — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 00:57:00 +0000

From 2nd to 7th September 2013, Cath Traynor and Lassana Koné from Natural Justice attended as observers, a self evaluation workshop in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The objective of the workshop, sponsored by UNDP and Rainforest Foundation Norway and facilitated by Samuel Nnah Ndobe, consisted in developing a strategy for civil society actors and indigenous peoples in the REDD+ process in DRC.

The REDD+ mechanism was launched in DRC in January 2009, with the first joint mission carried out by the United Nations for REDD + (UN-REDD) and the Forest Carbon Partnership Funds (FCPF) of the World Bank. With funding from these partners ($7.3 million from UN-REDD and $3.4 million from FCPF), DRC spent three years in the preparation phase for REDD+ after producing a very ambitious Readiness plan (R-PP), which was adopted in March 2010 by the UN-REDD board and the FCPF Participants Committee. The UN-REDD Programme pays special attention to the informed and constructive participation of all stakeholders, including indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities, and support them in the implementation of REDD + at the national and international level.

The implementation of the R-PP was made through a large consultative and participatory process with key stakeholders, including civil society. The Working Group on Climate and REDD (GTCR), is a platform for consultation of NGOs working in the DRC in the Environment sector.

During 6 days, the GTCR was able to engage positively and make a self assessment of their involvement in the REDD+ process in DRC. They also drafted an internal strategic roadmap to move from the preparation phase to the investment phase. Entering the investment phase, the GTCR will therefore need to prioritise, and take robust internal measures and actions, because the context and the issues are the subject of a new reality. The GTCR must adapt itself to these new terms and engagement approaches to effectively meet the new opportunities offered by the process.

A report on the lessons learned of the civil society engagement in the REDD+ process in DRC is expected by end of October.

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