Traditional Knowledge Bulletin

This week in review … Indigenous groups to manage turtle, dugong conservation in Australia
This week in review … TKDL to sign agreements with more countries, add formulations
Resource: IIED report on learning from farmers on climate change adaptation
This week in review … Workshop addresses traditional knowledge and climate change
Meeting prep: UNESCO meeting of category 2 centres in the field of intangible cultural heritage
Resource: QUNO paper on small-scale farmers and the WIPO IGC negotiations
This week in review … WIPO IGC continues negotiations on traditional cultural expressions, indigenous participation severely underfunded

This week in review … Indigenous groups to manage turtle, dugong conservation in Australia

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:15 PM PDT

Indigenous land managers to help with turtles, dugongs conservation
ABC Message Stick, 18 July 2013

NORTHERN QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA: Australia’s Federal Government has given $1 million towards the conservation of sea turtles and dugongs in northern Queensland. The money will be split between eight groups in the region for them to maintain marine environments and raise community awareness about the species. Federal Environment Minister Mark Butler said it is important to use the generations of local knowledge, adding that the indigenous land managers understand the topography and the habits of dugongs, sea turtles and other endangered species in the area that they have been sustainably harvesting for literally hundreds of generations. Read the article …

This week in review … TKDL to sign agreements with more countries, add formulations

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:12 PM PDT

TKDL to sign agreements with more countries, add one lakh more formulations
Pharmabiz.com, 18 July 2013

NEW DELHI, INDIA: India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) has already signed access agreements with countries including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan and Germany, and negotiations are under way with New Zealand and some other countries. TKDL is also planning to include additional one lakh formulations from Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha. Another move is to make it available to publicly funded research and development institutions for promoting research in the field. Read the article …

Resource: IIED report on learning from farmers on climate change adaptation

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:10 PM PDT

Tried and tested: learning from farmers on adaptation to climate change
Hannah Reid, Muyeye Chambwera, Laurel Murray, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), April 2013

The paper underscores how measures to increase climate change resilience must view food, energy, water and waste management systems as interconnected and mutually dependent. This holistic approach must also be applied to economic analysis for adaptation planning. Similarly, it is vital to use traditional knowledge and management skills, which can further support adaptation planning. The authors make three specific policy recommendations for achieving this. First, climate change should be tackled within an integrated environmental and development framework. A more holistic approach would address climate change adaptation and mitigation simultaneously, and also ensure complementarities between agendas that focus on climate change and those that focus on mainstream development. Economic assessments should also be more complete, and include a wide array of costs and benefits. Second, locally-led solutions and genuine community benefits should be kept central in international climate change agreements and scientific research. Policy makers must take into account traditional knowledge about seed varieties, livestock, crops and land management to enhance adaptive management capabilities. This requires a similarly large shift in high-level policy-making processes. Third, power imbalances should be challenged to ensure local people and their organisations are heard in policy making: Most policy-making processes in poor countries are organised along sectoral lines and are not geared up for strengthening local organisations and federations, building on local knowledge or empowering local people. A shift to more joined-up cross-sectoral policy making and institutional support is required. Lessons also need to be fed up from local and national levels to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – for example communities should be involved in national policy processes such as the National Adaptation Programmes of Action. Download the paper [pdf] …

This week in review … Workshop addresses traditional knowledge and climate change

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:07 PM PDT

Science vs. Traditional Knowledge in Climate Change: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Indian Country Today Media Network, 15 July 2013

COLORADO, USA: The hydrologist had carefully studied the scientific data and knew for a fact that water would be present if he drilled. So sure was he that he ignored a Hawaiian elder’s warning against drilling for water in that spot. The scientist did indeed hit water—but it was red, brackish and undrinkable. He had drilled on a hill that had been named, millennia ago, Red Water. Nearby was another site that had carried the name Water for Man for thousands of years. That is where the drinkable water could be found, but it did not take a hydrologist with fancy instruments. “We assume contemporary knowledge displaces that of the past, but it’s not true,” said Ramsay Taum, Native Hawaiian, board director of the Pasifika Foundation and on the faculty of the University of Hawaii, after giving this example of science’s potential to erroneously override indigenous knowledge. Taum’s comments were among several themes aired in the workshop “Rising Voices of Indigenous Peoples in Weather and Climate Science,” held on 1-2 July 2013, in Boulder, Colorado. The reliance on science to the exclusion of millennia of careful observation is another way in which culture is being eroded, participants said. Read the article …

Meeting prep: UNESCO meeting of category 2 centres in the field of intangible cultural heritage

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:05 PM PDT

Meeting of Category 2 Centres in the Field of Intangible Cultural Heritage
24-26 July 2013 (Sozopol, Bulgaria)

This global meeting is organized by UNESCO and the Regional Centre for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in South-Eastern Europe. The meeting aims to provide an opportunity for participants to take stock of the recent developments in the life of the Convention on intangible cultural heritage and the larger trends underway at UNESCO concerning category 2 centres. It will also facilitate joint efforts for the integration of the Organization’s medium-term strategy (37 C/4) and programme and budget for the coming quadrennium (37 C/5) into the medium-term and short-term planning of the respective centres, enabling them to continue to contribute effectively to UNESCO’s work. Further information on the meeting … Further information on Category 2 centres …

Resource: QUNO paper on small-scale farmers and the WIPO IGC negotiations

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:02 PM PDT

Small-scale farmers: The missing element in the WIPO IGC draft articles on genetic resources
Susan Bragdon, Quaker United Nations Office, July 2013

In this briefing paper, the author explores possible linkages and identifies questions with regard to the implications of the draft IGC text on genetic resources on small-scale farmers and food security. Highlighting that the input of small-scale farmers is critical to the success of any regime on genetic resources and traditional knowledge, the author argues that the IGC could focus on the intellectual property aspects of farmer innovation, through positive or defensive protection, through using the intellectual property (IP) system to support other regimes, or some combination of these types of measures. It is noted that the objectives in the consolidated draft have been reduced to compliance with access and benefit-sharing (ABS), and ensuring that IP/patent offices have the required information to prevent the granting of erroneous patents and misappropriation, while the crucial yet missing entry point is the connection between IP protection and incentives to develop new and relevant plant genetic resources for food and agriculture on-farm. Questions, such as what impact do the proposed IGC texts have on the rights of farmers to use and exchange seeds or on the choice and availability of desired technologies and know-how, need to be asked and explored. Download the paper [pdf] …

This week in review … WIPO IGC continues negotiations on traditional cultural expressions, indigenous participation severely underfunded

Posted: 23 Jul 2013 10:00 PM PDT

Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore: 25th session
15-24 July 2013 (Geneva, Switzerland)

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: Member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are currently meeting in order to advance 13-year-old negotiations on the protection of traditional cultural expressions to a point where they can enter final high-level treaty negotiations. The session will also include a stocktaking exercise, which does not intend to reopen the draft texts on genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, but go through them to consider whether they are ready for a diplomatic conference. The WIPO IGC meeting was preceded by a “retreat” involving member states, held from 5-7 July 2013, in Bangkok, Thailand.

IGC Chair Wayne McCook (Jamaica) has circulated an “informal issues paper,” dated 21 June, which outlined where talks stand. He cited various existing instruments and said that they provide “pockets of protection” but that there is “no comprehensive international legal protection system for TCEs.” The paper also highlighted areas still lacking consensus in the various articles of the draft text. WIPO Director General Francis Gurry opened the meeting by encouraging delegates to carry forward the spirit of Marrakesh, Morocco last month when they successfully completed a treaty on copyright exceptions for the visually impaired. “This is an exceptionally important meeting that is taking place now,” Gurry said, encouraging them to “find the means to converge so they can go forward with a good recommendation to the General Assembly,” to be held in September 2013. When the first revision of the text on traditional cultural resources was released on 17 July, the EU, Japan and the US rejected several of the changes proposed by the facilitators and were accused of not engaging in good faith to move negotiations along.

In the meantime, while the negotiations concern issues critical to indigenous peoples, the voluntary fund for indigenous participation in place since 2005 is continually on the verge of running out of funds and is not at zero. For this week’s meeting, Australia and New Zealand came to rescue at the last minute so that four representatives of indigenous peoples (out of a much longer list) could attend the negotiation.