Of Rights and Responsibilities

Chapter 4 analyses the idea of biocultural rights, starting off by quoting the words of Sanjay Kabir Bavikatte. The chapter explores some cases (in Kenya, India, and New Zealand) which may be interpreted from a biocultural rights perspectives, and looks at biocultural rights’ justifications and holders, and at the set of rights necessary to maintain environmental stewardship roles. Departing from the claim that the foundations of biocultural rights are two concurring ones, exploring biocultural rights’ ancestors—Darrel Posey’s Traditional Resource Rights—and dismissing the noble savage myth, biocultural rights are analysed to fully understand what they are and what they are not. The foundations of biocultural rights are then explored in detail, focusing on the problems arising from the fact that biocultural rights, besides conferring rights to their holders, also seem to confer a set of environmental duties.

Friends and Foes

Chapter 3 explores the controversial relationship of interdependence and conflict between environmental concerns and the protection of human rights by offering insights on the necessity—and the opportunity—of new ideas such as biocultural rights. Such necessity is made clear by bringing forward the inadequacy of human rights rhetoric in fully incorporating environmental challenges, as well as the damages environmental conservation can do to human rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. The chapter introduces attempts to combine conservation and rights interests through the recognition of the stewardship relationship indigenous peoples and local communities have towards the environment. Keeping distance from the dangers of the myth of the noble savage, and describing the important steps forward that have been done against fortress conservation practices, the chapters underlines those steps that still need to be taken.

Understanding Rights, Human Rights, and Group Rights

Chapters 2 provides an introduction to the concept of rights, useful for understanding the sui generis nature of biocultural rights. It looks at the birth of human rights and group rights, the foundations of human rights, the relation between human rights and the general interest, and the hardship of balancing human rights with other interests and goals. The chapter also introduces a brief outline of indigenous peoples and local communities’ rights, with focus on their different status in international law. This allows for comparison of biocultural rights with other human rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and for elaboration on the significance and different challenges that biocultural rights may have for local communities and indigenous peoples.

An Environmental Crisis

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the current environmental crisis and presents the main Western ethical approaches towards the conservation of the environment. Starting from anthropocentric ethics and moving to cosmocentric and biocentric ethics, it explains some of their advantages and disadvantages as well as the centrality of the question: what has value per se and what instrumentally? As a first step in the convoluted journey towards the discovery of biocultural rights, the chapter looks for the environmental approaches most suitable to accommodate conservation efforts and, interestingly but not surprisingly, finds them in those theories that come closer to the world views of indigenous peoples.

Past, Present, and Future

Chapter 6 traces the path of the previous chapters trying to draw some conclusions on the pros and cons of the idea of biocultural rights as envisioned by Bavikatte. It also draws some conclusions on difficulties of human rights theory to face the new challenges of the Anthropocene, and elaborates on the future of biocultural rights. In the attempt to try to overcome biocultural rights potentially unfair implications, the chapter looks at their legacy and at their potential developments towards local communities, including non-traditional ones living in developing countries.

Biocultural Rights

Chapter 5 explores the difficult and challenging questions that arise from the sui generis nature of biocultural rights: they carry certain characteristics that are typical of human rights discourse as well as others that are difficult to fit into its categories. A reflection is provided on the potential positive and negative implications biocultural rights entail from political and practical points of view, stressing the different status of indigenous peoples and local communities in international law, and pointing out how this influences the potential dangers and advantages of biocultural rights. In order to explore how biocultural rights could be valuable, albeit to be handled with care, the chapter provides the analysis of the case of the Khwe indigenous peoples of Bwabwata National Park, investigating their struggles and claims through the lens of biocultural rights.