WP3. An ethnographic study of the circulation of the BCPs

The last WP includes an ethnographic study of the circulation of these BCPs through negotiation fora on a regional, national and international scale, their mobilization by stakeholders and the way they are formalized depending on the legal concepts used by each institution (e.g., ‘farmers’, ‘indigenous and local communities’, ‘peasants’).

We surmise here that actors are immersed in ‘hybrid forums’ and engaged in ‘socio-technical controversies’ (Callon, Lascoumes, Barthe 2001) through which a more or less formalized set of socio-technical arrangements can be achieved.

These ‘hybrid forums’, as interfaces or sites of friction where different frames of references and ontologies may conflict, open spaces where a truly cosmopolitan politics – which can serve widely divergent interests, including the more-than-human and stretching across generations – can be devised. In other words, we argue that through these hybrid forums BCPs, while drawing on such scattered concepts as the ‘right to seed’ (Draft Declaration on peasants’ rights negotiated by the UN Human Rights Council on 29 September 2017 - A/HRC/36/L.29), ‘farmers’ rights’, self-determination, seed sovereignty and indigenous rights, can be used by stakeholders to foster the development of biocultural rights or more largely advance the interests of ILCs.

We also assume that these international fora are spaces for dialogues and exchanges through which these BCPs are negotiated and shaped.

The first task of this WP will be to map the different actors involved in the formulation of the Peruvian, Colombian and Malagasy PBCs under consideration in the WP1. To do so, we will reconstitute the networks of actors who are involved in the formulation of these protocols, from local to national, and from local to international. This will be achieved by reconstructing the history of these protocols through data collated in the WP1, interviews and documentary research.

The second task will consist in an ethnography of the negotiation fora through which BCPs circulate and the way they are mobilized and may by strategically used by the identified stakeholders. The idea is to offer a multi-site ethnography (Marcus 1995) inspired by the double ethnography (Atlani-Duault 2005), and thus to supplement the results yielded by the local ethnography (WP1). In the main, the global level ethnographic study will be carried out in such fora as the CBD (especially the Working Group on Article 8(j)), the ITPGRFA (especially the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Farmers’ Rights and the sessions of the Governing Body) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (in particular the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore). These international arenas are known for addressing issues related to local and indigenous communities and they generally involve the same kind of actors.

We distinguish here two types of logic:

• official negotiations during which representatives of Contracting Parties can mobilize, draw on, or push for a broader recognition of, the BCPs, and
• side events during which representatives of indigenous peoples and local communities as well as NGOs are very active.

We assume that these extra-official spaces are the places where these protocols are discussed, disseminated and probably shaped; that they stand as meeting points for knowledge sharing, promotion and political advocacy, and they can therefore influence official decisions whether at the international or national level.