From 4-6 December, 2012, Gino Cocchiaro of Natural Justice attended the regional workshop for southern and eastern Africa on the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management (BIOPAMA) programme in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop provided a forum for participants and stakeholders from protected areas, governments and civil society to support the planning of BIOPAMA, which is funded by the European Union and implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the European Commission Joint Research Centre, and the Access and Benefit Sharing Capacity Development Initiative (ABS Initiative).
Gino and Suhel al-Janabi (ABS Initiative) presented on ABS case studies, including a discussion on how the Traditional Health Practitioners of Bushbuckridge are using their biocultural community protocol to work towards a potential ABS agreement with a cosmetics company. Other sessions included presentations and discussion on regional reference information systems, refining and addressing capacity development needs, and the drafting of an action plan for the regional implementation of BIOPAMA including the identification of priority activities, identification of key national and regional stakeholders, and agreed processes for collecting data and information.
