Who we are

The Biocultural Heritage Initiative aims to protect the interlinked traditional knowledge, biodiversity, territories, cultures and rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs), through decolonising action-research, intercultural learning, policy research and advocacy.

The initiative aims to scale out biocultural heritage territories, inspired by the successful Potato Park in Peru. It seeks to protect and revitalise biocultural heritage, strengthen IPs and LC rights to land, self-determination, seeds, knowledge and food sovereignty, and enhance climate resilience, agroecology, livelihoods, nutrition and health.

The Biocultural Heritage Initiative began at a workshop in Cusco in 2005 when ANDES and the Potato Park (Peru) proposed the concept of ‘collective biocultural heritage’, as the common conceptual framework for research on traditional knowledge with IP and LCs in Peru, Panama, Kenya, China and India.

The partnership has conducted a number of participatory and decolonial action-research projects with IPs and LCs, supported the establishment of biocultural heritage territories in different countries, including Peru, China, Kenya and India, and organised several South-South and community-to-community learning exchanges. In 2014, it organised a global mountain communities’ workshop in Bhutan which gave rise to the International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP).

The Biocultural Heritage Initiative aims to enhance recognition of the importance of the Indigenous, traditional and local knowledge systems, holistic worldviews and cultural and spiritual values, and to reverse their loss. It links community voices and evidence with policy processes at local, national and global levels. 

For example, the initiative’s work ensured that the Convention on Biological Diversity’s guidance for developing sui generis regimes to protect traditional knowledge recognises the need for a holistic approach that is rooted in customary laws rather than Western intellectual property rights models.

The Biocultural Heritage Initiative is working to:

• Scale out and adapt self-governed biocultural territories to different contexts
• Protect Indigenous food systems, agrobiodiversity and crop wild relatives.
• Strengthen biocultural economies (monetary and non-monetary)
• Protect IP and LC rights over traditional territories, seeds and knowledge, and
• Inform global policies and advocate for the protection of biocultural heritage.  

• IIED
• Asociacion ANDES (Peru)
• Farmers’ Seed Network (China)
• Kenya Forestry Research Institute (Kenya)
• Lok Chetna Manch (India)
• Centre for Mountain Dynamics (India)
• International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP)
• Society for Alternative Learning and Transformation (SALT) (Kenya)
• Te Tira Whakamātaki (New Zealand)
• University of Leeds (UK)
• Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience, Coventry University (UK)
• Potato Park (Peru), and
• All the Indigenous Peoples and local communities the initiative works with.

The Biocultural Heritage Initiative has developed a biocultural protocol (PDF) to guide its work with IPs and LCs and ensure an ethical approach.

The protocol aims to protect the rights of communities over their traditional knowledge and biocultural heritage, and ensure that customary laws and protocols relating to the use of traditional knowledge and biocultural heritage are respected.

The biocultural protocol recognises that IPs and LCs are the custodians, creators and owners of their biocultural heritage (ie interlinked traditional knowledge, biodiversity, landscapes and cultural heritage). All partners of the Biocultural Heritage Initiative have pledged to abide by the biocultural protocol.

The protocol includes guidelines for the use of the Biocultural Heritage Initiative logo. All users of the logo, and of biocultural heritage for research or other purposes, are requested to act in accordance with this protocol. 

Use of the logo on any printed or digital outputs signifies that they were produced by the Biocultural Heritage Initiative and requires approval of its board of directors (which includes ANDES, IIED, INMIP and academia). Use of the Biocultural Heritage Initiative logo should not replace the logos and branding of IPs and LCs, which should be prioritised.  

Where traditional knowledge is included in printed or digital outputs, IPs and LCs retain full rights over them, and users of the logo must obtain the approval (free, prior and informed consent) of the concerned communities and adhere to their customary rules and protocols governing the use of their biocultural heritage.  

Where outputs include traditional knowledge that could be commercially exploited (such as information about traditional crop traits or medicinal plant uses), a community rights statement setting out the rules for their use must be obtained from the communities that have provided the traditional knowledge and included in the output.  

All publications that use the Biocultural Heritage Initiative logo or contain biocultural heritage should be published under copyleft or Creative Commons licenses and the information about traditional knowledge and related genetic resources they contain cannot be subjected to patents, copyrights of other intellectual property rights.  

Any benefits derived from the use of traditional knowledge and related genetic resources should be shared fairly and equitably with the provider communities in accordance with their customary rules and protocols.  

Any derivatives produced using traditional knowledge or genetic resources and new technologies (such as digital sequencing information), requires free, prior and informed consent of IPs and LCs and equitable benefit-sharing.  

Other IPs and LCs may use the traditional knowledge and genetic resources commercially if that is permitted by the provider community’s customary rules.  

Where outputs include traditional knowledge and biocultural heritage, research findings will be shared with the communities that provided it, in their own language (through translation of outputs wherever possible). 

The Biocultural Heritage Initiative logo can also be used by IP and LCs as a label for their biocultural products and services including seeds, in accordance with their own customary principles and rules, and should not replace the logos and branding of communities which should take priority.