Annex
ELEMENTS OF A PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE RETENTION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE, INNOVATIONS AND PRACTICES OF INDIGENOUS AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES EMBODYING TRADITIONAL LIFESTYLES RELEVANT FOR THE CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE USE OF BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
E. Capacity-building, education and training
25. Parties, Governments and relevant organizations should be encouraged to facilitate strengthening existing indigenous organizational structures and organizations representing local communities.
26. Specific capacity-building activities should be targeted at indigenous women and women in rural or otherwise marginal communities, and at traditional knowledge, innovations and practices.
27. Where appropriate, traditional knowledge, innovations and practices should be integrated into formal, local, subnational or national systems of education, which are directed towards local or indigenous communities.
28. Education and training should be offered to indigenous and local communities with special attention to the future role of young people so as to enable sustainable development, while being compatible with their traditions.
29. Parties, Governments and relevant stakeholders should be encouraged to learn about knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and to incorporate it in decision-making processes.
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Annex
AKWÉ: KON VOLUNTARY GUIDELINES FOR THE CONDUCT OF CULTURAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENTS REGARDING DEVELOPMENTS PROPOSED TO TAKE PLACE ON, OR WHICH ARE LIKELY TO IMPACT ON, SACRED SITES AND ON LANDS AND WATERS TRADITIONALLY OCCUPIED OR USED BY INDIGENOUS AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES
I. PURPOSE AND APPROACH
1. The present Guidelines are voluntary and intended to serve as guidance for Parties and Governments, subject to their national legislation, in the development and implementation of their impact-assessment regimes. The guidelines should be taken into consideration whenever developments are proposed to take place on, or which are likely to impact on, sacred sites and on lands and waters traditionally occupied or used by indigenous and local communities.
2. The objective of these Guidelines is to provide general advice on the incorporation of cultural, environmental, including biodiversity-related, and social considerations of indigenous and local communities into new or existing impact-assessment procedures, noting that some existing procedures may take these concerns into consideration in different ways. The Guidelines should be applied in conjunction with the guidelines for incorporating biodiversity-related issues into environmental impact assessment legislation and/or process and in strategic environmental assessment endorsed by the Conference of the Parties in paragraph 1 of decision VI/7 A, and contained in the annex to that decision.
3. More specifically, the purpose of these Guidelines is to provide a collaborative framework within which Governments, indigenous and local communities, decision makers and managers of developments can:
(a) Support the full and effective participation and involvement of indigenous and local communities in screening, scoping and development planning exercises;
(b) Properly take into account the cultural, environmental and social concerns and interests of indigenous and local communities, especially of women who often bear a disproportionately large share of negative development impacts;
(c) Take into account the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities as part of environmental, social and cultural impact-assessment processes, with due regard to the ownership of and the need for the protection and safeguarding of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices;
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8. As part of the above stages, the following steps may also be considered in carrying out an impact assessment for a development proposed to take place on, or which is likely to impact on, sacred sites and on lands and waters traditionally occupied or used by indigenous and local communities:
(a) Notification and public consultation of the proposed development by the proponent;
(b) Identification of indigenous and local communities and relevant stakeholders likely to be affected by the proposed development;
(c) Establishment of effective mechanisms for indigenous and local community participation, including for the participation of women, the youth, the elderly and other vulnerable groups, in the impact assessment processes;
9. While the focus of environmental, cultural and social impact assessments is necessarily different, it is assumed, however, that the steps or phases for carrying out all three kinds of assessment will be the same for the most part. However, in the case of small-scale locally-based and initiated development, it may be possible to omit some of these steps.
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IV. INTEGRATION OF CULTURAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENTS AS A SINGLE PROCESS
C. Social impact assessments
4. Gender considerations
48. In social impact assessments, there is a particular need to examine the potential impacts of a proposed development on women in the affected community with due regard to their role as providers of food and nurturers of family, community decision-makers and heads of households, as well as custodians of biodiversity and holders of particular elements of (gender-specific) traditional knowledge, innovations and practices.
