KhoiSan Dig For Indigenous Knowledge Rights In Climate Change Mitigation Practices

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA – A project to assess the impact of climate change on KhoiSan communities and the production of local level decision-making in rural communities is expected to contribute towards the guidelines and protections for indigenous knowledge holders under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), according to the project leader.

Natural Justice, an international non-governmental organisation that provides legal empowerment of indigenous peoples and local communities, is running a project to find out more about this knowledge from local communities.

The project is called Empowering Indigenous Peoples and Knowledge Systems Related to Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights. It is supported by the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet).

The Khoi and San communities based in the Northern and Western Cape provinces of South Africa are participating in the project. In response to questions from Munyaradzi Makoni for Intellectual Property Watch, Project Leader Catherine Traynor, provided answers based on the research project abstract. Below are the questions and answers.

Intellectual Property Watch (IPW): What is the project all about?

Catherine Traynor (TRAYNOR): This is a two-year project supported by the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet). This network is for researchers and practitioners from the Global South working on, or interested in, the role of openness and collaboration in science, as a transformative tool for both development thinking and practices.

The project began in February 2015 and will run until December 2016. We are currently engaging in a process of free, prior and informed consent with community leaders to explore their interest to participate in the project.

IPW: What are the aims of the project?

TRAYNOR: This project engages in participatory action research (PAR) with indigenous KhoiSan peoples to assess the following:

(i) how climate change has impacted their communities;

(ii) how they have produced indigenous knowledge related to addressing climate change and alternative strategies;

(ii) how such knowledge is characterized (or not) as indigenous intellectual property and openly shared (or not) with the outside public;

(iv) and what types of laws and policies (including intellectual property rights) promote and/or hinder these strategies and open collaboration with the public? This goes towards re-conceptualizing climate change, intellectual property, and indigenous knowledge not as inevitable environmental changes, natural property rights, or traditional (i.e. less valuable) ways of knowing. But rather to understand them as structured by political, economic, and socio-cultural histories pertaining to indigenous peoples. KhoiSan youth will be encouraged to participate in the research process to learn more about their communities and represent them as future leaders.

This project also enables KhoiSan to develop their own protocols through PAR for mitigating climate change through practices of open and collaborative science that may also involve closed practices (e.g. non-sharing, ownership). PAR enables indigenous communities to determine protocols for what and how such forms of indigenous knowledge related to climate change will be (or won’t be) more openly and collaboratively shared with the public.

This project thus challenges what is meant by “open and collaborative science” by examining its dynamic processes, revealing the ways in which it sometimes requires simultaneous modes of practice as open and closed.

IPW: Why is understanding how indigenous communities such as the KhoiSan are adapting to climate change so important?

TRAYNOR: Our work is based in the Northern and Western Provinces of South Africa, in these areas, over the last few decades, climate trends such as an increasing mean annual temperature, an increase in hot and cold extremes, an increase in the intensity of rainfall, and an increasing frequency of extreme rainfall events has been reported.

Khoi and San communities in these areas, whose livelihoods are closely tied to the land and natural resources, are experiencing these climatic challenges directly. Some communities, such as the Khoi pastoralists, have a long history of living within semi-arid environments and over generations they have developed approaches and strategies which enable them to successfully cope with these challenging conditions.

In the future, the environmental conditions are expected to become more challenging due to climate change, and the indigenous knowledge of these communities could be vital to assist them to adapt to these new conditions. The community holds a wealth of knowledge and experience with regards to adapting to difficult conditions. This could be the foundation for their adaptation strategies, and also provide useful teaching for others.

IPW: What could be the contribution of this research to society?

TRAYNOR: Currently at the international level the status of indigenous knowledge in climate change adaptation discussions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, there are limited guidelines and protections for the status of indigenous knowledge holders.

Furthermore, the problem is that we understand very little of how intellectual property rights relate to issues of climate change. This includes understanding how intellectual property rights relate to indigenous knowledge.

Indigenous peoples are greatly impacted by climate change, but may have developed their own forms of knowledge to address these impacts. Yet, intellectual property may prevent indigenous peoples from using their resources to mitigate climate change.

Intellectual property rights are an inherently closed system. By restricting access to certain resources such rights may hinder the more open and collaborative practices needed towards developing more robust climate change science involving indigenous peoples’ knowledge.

Additionally, indigenous peoples themselves may characterize their own indigenous knowledge as indigenous intellectual property in order to justify keeping it from the public and not openly sharing it.

It thus becomes important to develop new approaches to the study of intellectual property (and climate change and indigenous knowledge) in ways that get at the complex relationships between environment, law, and indigenous peoples to inform the making of better laws and strategies for addressing climate change that benefit indigenous peoples.

IPW: Thank you.

 

Image Credits: Ian Sewell