Giulia Sajeva, PhD

The conservation of environment and the protection of human rights are two of the most compelling needs of our time. Unfortunately, they are not always easy to combine and too often result in mutual harm. This book analyses the idea of biocultural rights as a proposal for harmonizing the needs of environmental and human rights. These rights, considered as a basket of group rights, are those deemed necessary to protect the stewardship role that certain indigenous peoples and local communities have played towards the environment. With a view to understanding the value and merits, as well as the threats that biocultural rights entail, the book critically assesses their foundations, content, and implications, and develops new perspectives and ideas concerning their potential applicability for promoting the socio-economic interests of indigenous people and local communities. It further explores the controversial relationship of interdependence and conflict between conservation of environment and protection of human rights.

This paper focuses on one of the answers proposed to the question: what type of change is to be pursued to limit human impact on the Earth while considering the needs of poor and disadvantaged communities? The paper looks a proposal that falls within sustainable development approaches based on market mechanisms and top-down technocratic responses: Payments for Ecosystem Services frameworks. They have been been criticized by many points of view, but this paper questions, in particular, their very reliance on the market, considering it inappropriate for the regulation of conservation activities and their interaction with local communities.

The article introduces the reader to the theory of Earth Jurisprudence through an analysis of the writings of Thomas Berry, Cormac Cullinan and Peter Burdon. After looking at the main revisions that the scholars of Earth Jurisprudence propose to the theory of law, the article recognizes the fact that they all move in the direction of natural law theories and questions the opportunity to take this path in order to change the relationship between human law and the environment.

Literature is rich on whether and how rights are limited by external considerations, such as other rights or particularly important general interests. This article concentrates on what could be a different type of limit of rights: internal limits stemming from the very foundations of a right. Its aim is to understand whether these hypothetically different internal limits actually collapse on the idea of internal limits of coherence theories; or whether they are equivalent, in terms of effects, to external limits to rights. In order to show the origin of the troubling with internal limits, the article begins with a brief introduction of biocultural rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and of the challenges they encountered, allegedly, because of the internal limits that rose from their foundations. It then concentrates on coherence theories and the internal limits they envisage, and continues with the analysis of two examples – freedom of expression and parental rights – in order to understand whether turning external limits into internal ones causes any change in the arising normative positions. Building on this thought experiment, it tries to explain which of the sui generis features of biocultural rights are, actually, due to their double foundation and which, instead, are generated by other, concealed operations. Finally, after recognizing the complexities of the idea of care and stewardship between two subjects/interests, it points out the more subtle implications of internal limits of rights, opening the way to considerations concerning the way legal concepts are used and interpreted.

In 2018, the Council of the ICCA Consortium decided to develop a lexicon of meaningful concepts and terms frequently used in its work, policies and relations with its Members and Partners. Many felt that such a reference compendium would be particularly useful as the Consortium has highlighted and adopted new ways of referring to phenomena that, historically, had not been conceptually analysed. First among them are the very ICCAs—territories of life at the heart of the Consortium’s work. This document is the result of the Council’s decision. It is a rich beginning, compiled with the contributions of many members of the Consortium and expected to evolve and be further integrated and enriched in the years to come. The document is now out to stimulate thinking, debate, joint analysis, learning and action within the Consortium’s membership, which is where the true meanings of our collective language will emerge (and evolve).

The author of the book When Rights Embrace Responsibilities. Biocultural Rights and Conservation of the Environment replies to the comments raised by Francesco Viola and Gianfrancesco Zanetti in the present journal issue. She also dwells on some topics of her book which deserve further clarification and speculates on possible future developments of biocultural rights.

This article is dedicated to the analysis of the uneasy relationship between human rights and the environment. Its first part focuses on new proposals such as the greening of human rights, the development of procedural environmental rights and the creation of specific environmental rights, aimed at the harmonization between human rights and environmental protection. The second part focuses on groups whose rights are particularly at risk vis à vis environmental protection activities: indigenous peoples and local communities. The article then analyses current trends of change in the relationship between indigenous peoples and local communities rights and the protection of the environment thanks to the increased recognition of their role as conservation allies.

The 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution is often presented as building on the local traditions of indigenous peoples in order to propose a non-anthropocentric approach to the conservation of the environment, based on the concept of buen vivir. After providing a short introduction on anthropocentric and non-anthropo-centric approaches to the environment, with attention to indigenous worldviews, this article attempts to: analyse the concept of buen vivir, appearing to have unclear boundaries; understand whether or not it is a concept derived from indigenous worldviews; and explore the innovative non-anthropocentric feature of the recognition of rights to the environment. Finally, the article uses the idea of rights of the environment as a key to interpret the fuzzy concept of buen vivir in the most effective way to enhance the conservation of the environment.

Kabir Bavikatte has recently argued that a new ‘basket’ of group rights is emerging from the interpretation of multilateral environmental agreements, domestic law and case law, and from shifts in the development discourse and the struggles of communities. He refers to this new set of rights as ‘biocultural rights’ and defines them as being all the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities required to secure their stewardship role over their lands and waters. Biocultural rights build on two foundations: the self-determination and cultural diversity of indigenous peoples and local communities, and the conservation of the environment. This article suggests that the second foundation is what makes biocultural rights potentially more appealing than other human rights but that it is also the reason for their sui generis potential. Unlike human rights generally, biocultural rights seem to be aimed at protecting not only the interests of their right-holders, indigenous peoples and local communities, but also seem to protect a general interest of humankind in the conservation of the environment through the impositions of stewardship duties on rights-holders. Therefore, it is suggested that while biocultural rights provide a promising instrument for the promotion and protection of the interests of indigenous peoples and local communities, they also require such peoples and communities to be conscious of the fact that they, as biocultural rights-holders, take on a potentially inequitable duty towards environmental sustainability that limits their self-determination interests. The article explores some of the conceptual tensions emerging from this possibility and from the fact that indigenous peoples and local communities are presented as co-referents for the same umbrella of rights.

This user’s guide covers the widely traded cactus family and how it is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Written for the non-expert, the guide explores the major groups of cacti in trade, their distribution, conservation status, use and levels of trade as well as the likelihood of illegal trade.

Botanical research can often involve access to traditional knowledge, as well as to botanical material held or managed by Indigenous and Local Communities (ILCs). There is a large and growing body of local, national and international laws, declarations and codes of conduct to guide best practice in this area. Researchers and students must be aware of this changing framework before collecting material and information in areas inhabited by ILCs.

This article describes the peculiarites of CITES application in Europe. First, it shows the necessity of internal acts of implementation to any international convention. Then, it explains why the EC decided to give a common implementation of CITES and gives a brief outline of the relevant regulations, known as Wildlife Trade Regulation. The consequences of the common European implementation are finally explored to show the need for the EC Accession to CITES.