Indigenous Knowledge in Climate Change Adaptation: Recognition of

the Rights of Communities and Knowledge Holders

Dr. Cath Traynor & Mr. Reino Le Fleur

II. Providing technical support and guidance to parties on adaptation action

and means of implementation

Adaptation Committee recommends that Parties underline the importance of indigenous and traditional knowledge and practices (I&TK), & encourage their integration into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).

Integration supported through:

• Research, education and awareness, to document, disseminate, and develop tools…to institutionalize I&TK practices into national policies and processes;

• Enhancing accountability and enforcing implementation of existing laws, rules and procedures dealing with I&TK and practices thus ensuring recognition of the rights of communities and holders of I&TK and practices throughout the adaptation process.

The South African Context: Indigenous Khoi communities

• South African historical context is that indigenous peoples knowledge, resources, and heritage have been cast as free for the taking;

• Due to colonisation and apartheid, many communities dispossessed of their ancestral lands and natural resources which formed the basis of their pastoralist livelihoods.

• Revitalisation of indigenous identity;

• Possible formal recognition of leaders in the ‘Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Bill’ (2015).

Empowering Indigenous Peoples and Knowledge Systems Related to Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights

• Project takes history into account considering how indigenous peoples are producing knowledge related to climate change and how such knowledge maybe characterised as indigenous peoples intellectual property and/or impacted by the dominant intellectual property regimes.

• Share approaches, tools and experiences;

Researching IK & Ethics Procedures

• Collaborative project: Two universities, NGO & communities;

• University regulatory processes that structure human subject research – seeks to ensure protection and informed consent of human subjects; at the same time secures power relations, between ‘expert’ researchers who produce knowledge and vulnerable subjects who produce mere data.

• Efforts towards more open and collaborative research must understand the complex tensions that shape and are shaped by knowledge production;

• Engaging in ethics procedures itself is political work.

Individual and Community Rights

• Ethics processes designed for individuals;

• IK is also held collectively;

Community – Researcher Contracts

• Developed with community leaders;

• Purpose to ensure that community intellectual property is controlled and protected in accordance with UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and South African Policies and Laws;

• Includes information on project proposal, ethics clearance procedures, FPIC procedures, respect for customary institutions, procedures and laws, intellectual property rights clauses, and permissions concerning utilisation of IK and materials produced during the project.

Communities as Decision-makers

• Priority in adaptation processes is re-empowerment so that communities make their own assessments and decisions regarding adaptation responses;

• Methodologies: Participatory action research and Community Co-Researchers;

• Capacity building on climate change science, impacts, and national and international processes;

• Legal empowerment workshops: Raise awareness of rights, tools and strategies for engagement; and link to relevant international laws and debates on traditional knowledge (e.g. CBD, Nagoya Protocol, discussions in WIPO, UNCCD, etc.)

• Facilitate a participatory process whereby communities develop their own protocols regards for what and how forms of IK will be shared (or not) with the public.

Tensions

• Recognizes tensions between openness and intellectual property processes;

• Contribute towards addressing how I&TK is used and

protected in adaptation in practice.

Mr. Reino Le Fleur Griqua National Conference, South Africa

Cath Traynor: cath@naturaljustice.org.za