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NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY AUTHORITY
Chennai
National Workshop on People's Biodiversity Register
Date: 22-23rd
June 2006
Venue: Institute of
Ocean Management, Anna University, Chennai 600 025.
RECOMMENDATIONS
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People's
Biodiversity Registers must be documents of the people, by the
people and for the people. Given the diversity of life and
ecosystems, of people and economy, over our vast country, PBR
exercises have to be fine tuned to the local conditions, and
must be based on the understanding that the original holders of
the knowledge they will contain are the local communities and
their members. For this reason, the process of compiling each
PBR must begin with obtaining prior informed consent of the
concerned community with active involvement of the diverse women
and men knowledge holders with facilitative support of
scientists, resource managers, teachers and students as
appropriate. Each community shall control the PBR process and
decide on which components of the information recorded are to be
shared openly with the public, which components are to be shared
under certain conditions specified by the knowledge holders, and
which components should be accessible only to the community
members. Since PBRs are documents formulated by communities and
belong to them, PBRs of communities that do not wish to
integrate any of the PBR information into the broader
Information System would not be considered any less legitimate
for purposes of conservation, legal protection, benefit-sharing,
or other related purposes, than those that are willing to
integrate some or all of the recorded information, either
conditionally or unconditionally, into the larger Indian
Biodiversity Information System.
Thus, PBR exercises should not be undertaken as set tasks with
all details specified, but must allow for sufficient freedom to
take on board local resource use landscapes, institutions,
concerns and priorities. The exercises must also permit use of a
whole spectrum of media from written text, photographs,
paintings and songs to seed banks. At the same time, it is also
desirable that communities have the opportunity of taking
advantage of modern communication networks and access
information relating to technologies and markets, as also share
knowledge and experiences with other communities. This would be
facilitated by linking of local PBR exercises with the larger
Indian Biodiversity Information System, with the understanding,
of course, that the communities have the prerogative to decide
on the components of PBR information that are to be shared,
either conditionally or unconditionally, as a part of the
nation-wide Information System.
Such participation in information networks would be greatly
facilitated by adopting the version of the PBR methodology as
well as the PeBINFO database presented at the Workshop as the
starting point for initiating countrywide PBR exercises. It is
noted that the methodology and database are so designed as to
permit extensive adaptation to local context, including, either
simplification or further elaboration. It is also noted that if
such adaptation results in considerable heterogeneity in the
databases developed in different states, or even at the level of
different districts, it would still be possible to effectively
link them into a countrywide confederated Information System.
With this understanding, the NBA should promote the following
set of activities, taking inputs from an Advisory Group set up
for the purpose ensuring representation of community knowledge
holders and of NGOs working with them:
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| 1. |
Developing, within the next 6 months to 1 year, ways and means
of effectively providing control of the PBRs to the relevant
communities, including through appropriate legal means (such as
Rules under the Biological Diversity Act), administrative
mechanisms, and local empowerment; this should include all PBR
exercises/documents/collections, including those that
communities desire not to incorporate into the national
database. |
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| 2. |
Developing guidelines for the process by which PBRs are to be
initiated; such guidelines should stress that PBRs should be
tried out at a few sites to start with especially where the
women and men of communities are well-organized to carry them
out, and lessons from these learnt before spreading to other
sites; the appropriate unit of settlement at which PBRs should
be formulated, and the flexibility of adapting to local
conditions. In particular, it may be appropriate to go down
below the level of a Panchayat/ Municipality, and, as in the
case of Village Forest Committees, organize sub-committees of
BMCs at the level of individual villages/ hamlets/town wards and
to prepare PBRs at this level. In the case of Schedule V areas,
the selection of communities shall be in accordance with the
Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 and in
Schedule VI areas based on the local traditional village
institutions. In all cases, all adult residents must constitute
the general body (the Gram Sabha under the 73rd Constitutional
amendment) which selects its BMC in contrast to various
committees formed by sectoral departments for their specific
projects or programmes. The responsibility for technical support
for the exercise may be appropriately assigned to forest,
agriculture or fisheries departments depending on the prevalent
environmental regime. |
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| 3. |
Organization of an Indian Biodiversity Information System
(IBIS), incorporating People's Biodiversity Register Information
System (PeBINFO), and means of providing feedback to communities
whose information is going into such a system, especially on how
their knowledge is being used and protected, new values which
the knowledge is acquiring, alerts on acts of biopiracy relating
to their knowledge, and benefits that ought to be flowing back
to them. A draft of the proposed structure and functions of IBIS
should be put up for public inputs for a period of 3 to 6
months, and comments sought from research/scientific
institutions, NGOs, government officials, and community
organizations, before being finalized. |
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| 4. |
Creating web-compatible, free, open source software versions of
People's Biodiversity Register Information System (PeBINFO),
preferably with the involvement of not for profit organizations. |
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| 5. |
Preparing more user-friendly versions of People's Biodiversity
Register Methodology Manual for implementation at BMC level,
giving adequate emphasis to both wild and agricultural
(cultivated/domesticated) biodiversity. |
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| 6. |
Establishment of Technical Support Groups, involving
taxonomists, as well as ecologists, agricultural scientists,
expert farmers & NGO representatives, biostatisticians and
computer scientists to support the PBR activities at national,
state and district levels. |
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| 7. |
Development of educational resource material to support
teacher-student-parent activities in the study and survey of
local biodiversity. |
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| 8. |
Development of information dissemination and capacity building
programmes for the women and men of communities to make them
aware of the objectives and process of preparing PBRs and being
able to access and use the IBIS and PeBINFO. |
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| 9. |
Preparation of countrywide inventory of focal issues on
conservation, sustainable and equitable use of biodiversity and
Traditional Knowledge, practices and innovations, based on the
articulation and information of communities. |
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| 10. |
Preparation of countrywide inventory of focal wild and
domesticated taxa (species, varieties, sub varieties, forma, and
breeds) and habitats of local interest, along with their local
and scientific names. |
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| 11. |
Finalizing a system of management of confidential information. |
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12. |
Preparation and dissemination of resource material, including
interactive identification keys for countrywide set of focal
taxa and landscape and waterscape element types. |
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13. |
Preparation of resource material to promote sustainable
harvests, storage, preliminary processing, local value addition
and efficient marketing of biodiversity resources |
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14. |
Organizing training programmes and field trials. |
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15. |
Documenting and disseminating information on various methods
that communities are using to prepare PBRs, including in the
case of PBRs that communities do not want to incorporate into a
national system. |
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16. |
Developing and putting into place a publicly transparent system
of monitoring the progress of PBR formulation, especially to
ensure against distortions such as the process becoming
mechanical and target-oriented, or to detect violations of the
proposed system of community control, legal protection, and
benefit-sharing with respect to the knowledge being documented.
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17. |
Preparing, within the next 6 months, guidelines for the
formation of BMCs (in view of the fact that PBRs are essentially
to be prepared by BMCs, which therefore presupposes the
existence of strong and effective BMCs). These guidelines should
include BMC functions and powers, their links with PRIs and
other local governance institutions with special attention to
their variations in Schedule V & VI areas, their relationship
with existing institutions at village and broader levels
including with village bodies and line departments, their area
of jurisdiction, and other aspects. For this purpose, NBA may
call for a workshop with SBBs, NGOs, PRI representatives, state
PRI departments, community organizations and networks,
scientists, and others, to work out these guidelines, and open
up a draft set of guidelines for public comment before
finalization. The involvement of community representatives, e.g.
from sites where communities are already well organized into
bodies akin to BMCs, is crucial in the development of these
guidelines. Once ready, the guidelines should be circulated to
states to follow. |
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