EDITO RIAL 16 Co-engaged Learning Practices for Equity, Livelihoods and Development A well recognised fact is that mega-diverse regions are faced with a complex dilemma of resource richness on the one hand and, poverty on the other. Recognising the critical developmental role of bio-cultural diversity studies suggest that organised advancement of bio-enterprise has potential not only in enhancing the livelihoods and well-being of both individuals and communities, but also improving conservation and sustainable resource use, as well as participation of different stakeholders in such measures. Creating appropriate policy frameworks, promotion of community-based livelihoods and related capacities, enhancing their access to national and international markets with ethical and equitable trade, and implementation of access and benefit sharing (ABS) frameworks are important goals in the direction (Jaramille 2010). Better awareness on the potential of bio-enterprises for eradication of poverty, assuring equity, and ethical practices are essential apart from delivering capacities and appropriate technologies for value addition. Fair and just ABS evolved as an international mechanism for facilitating equitable partnerships of local communities (mainly with multinational industries or researchers) while sharing bioresources or traditional knowledge for commercial purposes. Even after two decades of policy developments in this direction, its implementation largely remains in the form of pilot models lacking upscaling strategies. Whereas several communities have been actively pursuing such an approach, support for such initiatives within the policy processes has lagged behind. Studies show that ABS as a mechanism within local communities has key potential in improving livelihoods (Suneetha and Balakrishna 2009). ABS as a model to promote local equity through a contractual agreement between multinational companies and communities, local initiatives such as bioresource cooperatives, producer companies, local protocols, and customary practices are to be supported, and could be seen as a critical element of developing new livelihood practices. Such livelihood models based on the principles of “growing from within” have shown that a health ecosystem and revitalised traditional knowledge can contribute to better livelihoods as well as well-being (Suneetha et al. 2010). This is in line with the Nagoya protocol preamble which notes “… the interrelationship between genetic resources and traditional knowledge, their inseparable nature for indigenous and local communities, the importance of the traditional knowledge for the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use.” As many issues that become critical elements of ABS and are important for new livelihood models are still not adequately considered under the national legislations on ABS, RCEs have an important educational role in putting the ABS strategy into practice. RCE Greater Phnom Penh works with two major stakeholders in the region: elementary schools and farmers. Promoting food, agriculture and environmental education has been a major thrust area in the initiative. In order to reduce the threat to local biodiversity as well as to maintain a healthy population, the partners have been involved in sustainable farming practices such as producing and applying compost, pellet compost, liquid bio-fertiliser and bio-pesticide promoted at elementary schools as well as local communities. For elementary schools, school gardens have been a key activity. Awareness creation and capacity building are conducted regularly for local farmers in organic farming. The RCE offers promise as a site for coengaged participants to be engaged in learning and action at a community level in a real world that is responding to and producing risk. Here worlds apart might be re-read as worlds co-engaged in deliberative change practices towards the production of more just and equitable worlds of practice with less risk and rectifying some of the degradation produced over a period of widening modernist exploitation and marginalisation.
Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity
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