Community Protocols as Tools for Resisting Exclusion in Global Environmental Governance

Abstract

Protocolos comunitários como ferramentas de resistência à exclusão no âmbito da governança ambiental global Protocolos comunitarios como herramientas para resistir a la exclusión en gobernanza ambiental global ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the rise of the community protocol approach under the access and benefit-sharing (ABS) transnational governance arena, to understand how local initiatives translate a global environmental regulation. This paper contributes to the literature on transnational governance by showing how this is constituted by a series of translation processes and each time a concept is introduced in a transnational arena and then translated by a community or organization, it gains new forms and uses depending on the interests and experiences of the actors involved. However, the same concept used for the same goal by communities in different parts of the world led to different concrete outcomes, which points to the idea that the outcomes in translation processes are not only ongoing but also unpredictable. In addition, the cases illustrate that in the process of actively translating a global regulation, the local actors themselves also change. Finally, the emergent findings show how community protocols were translated to become translocal tools to resist exclusion in environmental governance through two main mechanisms: connecting goals and practices and (re)connecting social networks. KEYWORDS | Transnational governance, translation, translocal resistance, local communities, access and benefit-sharing. RESUMO RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas | FGV/EAESP

Challenging power from the bottom up? Community protocols, benefit-sharing, and the challenge of dominant discourses

“…The South African case is a well documented one (Bavikatte et al, 2015;Delgado, 2016;Sibuye et al, 2012), and concerns a group of traditional health practitioners from a range of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. This group formed the Kukula traditional health practitioners' Association and drafted a community protocol in 2009 (Traditional Health Practitioners of Bushbuckridge, 2010) to highlight their work in communities and threats to biodiversity in the area, adjacent to Kruger national park.…”

“…Expressing a worldview may for dialogue between dominant and minority worldviews, and may also allow a community to rediscover or (re)define worldviews at risk of disappearing. Longstanding marginalisation may be a factor in the latter, including structural inequalities suffered by community members (Delgado, 2016). This observation brings a number of the factors discussed above to the fore once again: governmental and legal contexts create community marginalisation, while community organisation for community protocol processes is key to the expression or definition of a worldview.…”

Governança Transnacional: Definições, Abordagens e Agenda de Pesquisa

“…Mesmo se a sociedade teve sua virada para a governança (Black, 2008) e que a influência dos Estados-nações tenha se alterado, é preciso produzir conhecimento a partir da perspectiva dos países da periferia do capitalismo. Corroborando esta evidência da pesquisa, Vieira e Quack (2016), Delgado (2016) e Fontoura, Bharucha e Böhm (2016) chamam a atenção sobre como movimentos sociais do Sul Global vêm utilizando os mecanismos de governança transnacional para atingirem seus objetivos, influenciando Estados-nações a preservarem seus direitos estabelecidos. Estes trabalhos estão na vanguarda da literatura sobre governança transnacional, enfatizando a necessidade de maiores estudos sobre o contexto do Sul Global, que é uma área que deverá se expandir nos próximos anos, como argumentam Morgan, Gomes e Perez-Aleman (2016), Bartley (2015) e Samford (2015).…”

Challenging Power Asymmetries from the Bottom Up? Community Protocols and the Convention on Biological Diversity at the Global/Local Crossroads

“…Longstanding marginalisation may be a factor in the latter, including structural inequalities suffered by community members (see e.g. Delgado 2016). This observation brings a number of the factors discussed above to the fore once again: governmental and legal contexts create community marginalisation, while community organisation for community protocol processes is key to the expression or definition of a worldview.…”