Challenging power from the bottom up? Community protocols, benefit-sharing, and the challenge of dominant discourses

This article discusses the ways in which community protocols might challenge the dominant discourses that guide environmental law and policy at the local, national and international levels and makes suggestions about the conditions that need to be fulfilled if such a challenge is to be effective. Community protocols have attracted the attention of many scholars as they are recognised in the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Nagoya Protocol. They are argued to hold the potential to achieve fair and equitable benefit-sharing by allowing local community voices to express their customary law, worldviews, and ideas of benefit and development among other things. While much of the existing literature discusses community protocols as legal tools, they are also tools that may challenge the dominant discourses argued to guide environmental law and policy. The article takes up this question on the basis of findings from five original case studies. It is argued that community protocols may challenge dominant discourses by: facilitating and articulating the recognition of local communities and indigenous peoples; providing a source for understanding their worldviews; and by empowering them in the long term. In order to achieve these outcomes, community protocol must be understood as processes and pay attention to legal and political contexts, how communities organise, the role of supporting actors, and the articulation of benefits.