Posted 13 July 2011, by Staff, Kruger To Canyons Biosphere Region, kruger2canyons.org
Communities have rights to access natural resources and they also have rights to have their traditional knowledge protected, but often remain ignorant of both. Even where they do know their rights, they lack the opportunities to discuss the issues within their communities.
The drawing up of Bio-cultural Protocols globally assists these communities in not only protecting their traditional knowledge and traditionally used resources, but also assists them in gaining access to historically used resources or areas for resource use/ collection that has in recent years become unavailable to them.
This document is a bio-cultural protocol developed in conjunction with the Traditional Health Practitioners of Bushbuckridge in 2009-2010. It is written in 3 languages (English, Shangaan and Pedi) and outlines their roles in the community, challenges they face as well as their rights according to the protection of their Traditional Knowledge (TK)
This document has been produced on the process involved in the development of the Bio-cultural Protocol and is for the benefit of replication of this project – either in different regions within K2C or different beneficiary groups, or alternatively for different organisations within South Africa.
The Bio-Cultural Protocol Document is available in .pdf format here: http://www.kruger2canyons.org/Biocultural%20Protocol%20-%20final%20BCP%20in%203%20languages%20-%20low%20res.pdf