Biodiversity and Geographical Indications in India

Objectives

Promotion of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is being considered with increased interest at the international level, as a way to involve local populations in biodiversity management and conservation. When associated to local productions and recognized by national and/or international authorities through labels, it is seen as an asset to support local communities’ development and to protect the landscapes and ecosystems on which they rely. Among the more promising institutional tools are geographical indications (GI), ecocertification, fair trade labels and park trademarks.

India has taken the lead in protecting its cultural and biological diversity through the promotion of TEK, with a sui generis protection system that is looked upon as a model for other countries. Conflicts over spotlight productions such as Basmati rice and Darjeeling tea have created a nationwide awareness. What remains to be seen is if those GI will play a role in managing and conserving the cultural and biological diversity associated to the protected products.

The main objective of this project is to identify the conditions that enable such a certification scheme built upon the geographical origin to be successful both in promoting local development and protecting cultural and biological diversity.

The specific objectives are:

• To identify the environmental and social specificities of local productions and their impacts on biodiversity.
• To support the establishment of suitable Geographical Indications through the enhancement of spaces for negotiations and the clarification of the certification process mechanisms.
• To develop indicators to monitor and predict the impacts of such innovative schemes on the biological and cultural diversity associated, enabling an informed choice by the stakeholders involved.

Get more information on BIODIVALLOC here.

Materials and Methods

In India, the project will focus on the productions of the coffee based agroforestry system of Kodagu district (Coorg), in the Western Ghats (Karnataka State). This district has already seen the establishment of a GI (Coorg Orange) and its own name is already used by a private company to market coffee.

A comprehensive inventory of the various localised productions suitable for such a scheme will be drawn up, through focused interviews with key resource informants. Based on this inventory, we will derive a typology of the stakeholders, practices and representations associated to the local productions. This typology will be enable quantitative data to be gathered through structures interviews. This will be coupled to a critical analysis of the legal tools, rules and regulations that shape the institutional framework of the GI scheme in India. The environmental and economical impacts of the different schemes will be analysed, trough basic ecological inventories and micro-economical surveys and the spatial and temporal dynamics they create will be characterized using GIS tools.

The BIODIVALLOC (Biodiversity and Valuation Tools for Localised Productions) project spans over 6 countries (Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Niger, Senegal and South Africa). It will compare the findings with other 6 field studies, where the development of such schemes ranges from emerging strategies and early identification process to actual implementation of labels.

Partners

See project outline.

Team of BIODIVALLOC project

Project Leader:

• Dr. Marie Christine Cormier-Salem – Project Leader and West Africa Coast Team Leader ( Institut de Recherche pour le Développement – IRD)

Regional Leaders:

• Dr. Estelle Bienabe – South Africa and India Team Leader (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement – CIRAD)
• Dr. Laure Emperaire – Brazil Team Leader (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement – IRD)
• Dr. Anne Luxereau – Niger Team Leader (Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle, France – MNHN)
• Dr. François Verdeaux – Ethiopia Team Leader (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement – IRD)

Main Outputs

Work in progress. Project launched in February 2006.