Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Metcalf, Cherie; Bubela, Tania --- "Aboriginal Rights and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Northern Canada" [2012] ELECD 336; in Bubela, Tania; Gold, Richard E. (eds), "Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge

Editor(s): Bubela, Tania; Gold, Richard E.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848442238

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Aboriginal Rights and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Northern Canada

Author(s): Metcalf, Cherie; Bubela, Tania

Number of pages: 40

Extract:

9. Aboriginal rights and traditional
ecological knowledge in Northern
Canada
Cherie Metcalf and Tania Bubela
The legal landscape relevant to the protection and promotion of traditional
ecological knowledge (TEK) in Canada has undergone significant development
in recent years. In the international arena, Canada is a party to the UN
Convention on Biodiversity, and recently endorsed the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples.1 Both of these instruments commit Canada to
providing legal recognition for indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge
(TK).2 However, in practice, the influence of international law has largely been



1 See Convention on Biological Diversity, 5 June 1992, 1760 UNTS 79, Article
8(j); United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, GA Res 295,
UNGAOR 2007, particularly Art. 31. For discussion of Canada's endorsement in
November 2010, see http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID= 36751&C
r=indigenous&Cr1 (last accessed November 2011). See also Rio Declaration on the
Environment and Development, United Nations Conference on the Environment and
Development, Annex, Resolution 1, UN Doc A/CONF 151/26/Rev1 (vol 1) (1993),
Principle 22, for an additional international commitment by Canada recognizing a
rights-based dimension to traditional knowledge and a potentially important role for
traditional knowledge in environmental management generally.
2 Canada has made little progress toward the national implementation of Access
and Benefit Sharing provisions or any formal recognition of property or other rights
specifically in TK despite being a signatory to the CBD. A consultation document ...