Side Event

Building A Coalition For the Defence and Nurturance of Biodiversity

Organizer
South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy

Date and Time
16 October 2012 18:15 - 19:45

Meeting
Eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 11)

The way modern science and technology is usually backed by outside powers in Asia, Africa and Latin America has unfolded in a manner that it has created a negative environment for the nurturance and continuity of plants diversity. The undermining has been very severe and comprehensive, and most important is that modern knowledge systems have not recognized the existence and legitimacy of these traditional knowledge systems. Non-modern health experts (traditional healers) have been gradually over shadowed by modern health education system, pharmacology, public health, debate on demand-supply chain of these non-modern health knowledge experts (traditional healers). The following aspects have been ignored or undermined. It is a collective failure of our times and SADED with various think tanks, community leaders, NGOs, policy planners, and legal experts, has set up a working group "Collective for Self Learning on Biodiversity". We want to articulate these debates during UN-CBD CoP 11, in Hyderabad, with the hope that our collective (Collective for Self Learning on Biodiversity) will also contribute in creating 'political will', so that richness of our biodiversity is not lost. We want to present some case studies, (a) where biodiversity has regenerated-recovered, and (b) where biodiversity has been threatened. And we also want to organize a brainstorming session with community leaders, modern policy planners, and NGOs to build a broad coalition for the defence and nurturance of our biodiversity. In each session, there will be two key initiators and four discussants from different backgrounds-stakeholders. Lead organizer: South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy (SADED) Collaborative organizations: Collective for Self Learning on Biodiversity, Beyond Copenhagen Collective, Timbaktu Collective, CECOEDECON, PAIRVI, Center for Local Health Traditions, BJVJ