BENELEX at CBD and Climate Conference
On 6th November 2015, the BENELEX team organized the side-event “Fair and Equitable Benefit-Sharing for the Protection and Full Realization of the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities: Challenges and Opportunities in International Law” at the Ninth meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Article 8(j) and Related Provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) held in Montreal, Canada, from 4-7 November 2015.
BENELEX Team at CBD 6th November 2015
The event aimed to discuss new research findings on actual and potential interactions between the CBD and international human rights law on fair and equitable benefit-sharing of relevance to indigenous peoples and local communities. In particular, the event focused on: the interactions between international biodiversity and human rights law in relation to fair and equitable benefit-sharing from the sustainable use of natural resources (not only genetic resources, but also extractives, tourism and conservation) and from the use of traditional knowledge (including for non-commercial purposes); lessons learnt in case studies in South Africa (access to protected areas), Namibia (traditional management of protected areas), Argentina (mining in indigenous lands), Malaysia (agricultural development in indigenous land) and Greece (traditional pastoralism); and opportunities for benefit-sharing to address equity issues from global to local levels in relation to fisheries, marine ecosystem services and poverty alleviation.
BENELEX Team at Paris Climate Conference
On 30 November 2015, the BENELEX team contributed to the side-event on "REDD+, international human rights and biodiversity law" at the Paris Climate Conference. The side-event was organized by L’Association franc?aise des Nations
Unies d’Aix-en-Provence, l’Organisation internationale de la francophonie and the government of Madagascar, in cooperation with the research projects CIRCULEX (Circulations de normes et réseaux d’acteurs dans la gouvernance internationale de l’environnement), PRIGOUE (Une privatisation de la gouvernance globale de l'environnement? Rôles des standards durables multi-acteurs dans la régulation des CEP) and BENELEX. Elisa Morgera and Annalisa Savaresi presented BENELEX research on REDD+ and fair and equitable benefit-sharing, focusing on the interplay between international climate change, biodiversity and human rights law. The papers presented at the event can be found at http://tinyurl.com/j8wojs3