Self-evaluation and Declaration of ICCAs in Spain: a Community-led Peer-review Process

Abstract

ICCAs is a term widely used to indicate areas and territories conserved by local communities and indigenous peoples, for example, by the IUCN, the Convention on Biological Diversity or United Nations. The ICCA Registry, a database maintained by UN-Environment - World Monitoring Conservation Centre enables indigenous peoples and local communities to list their conserved areas at international level. This provides an opportunity for indigenous peoples and local communities to contribute to a better understanding of the global extent of conserved areas, their importance for conservation, and the challenges that local communities face in defending their territories and livelihoods against diverse threats. There is consensus that local communities and indigenous peoples themselves should drive the process of assessing at national or regional level what areas and territories meets the ICCA definition, through a peer-review protocol outside of government or NGOs interferences, as a prerequisite for the registration. An example of such a protocol was developed by the ICCA Consortium and Iniciativa Comunales — an association of communities governing commons in Spain — for Spain, finally approved in June 2016. In the Spanish protocol, each candidate ICCA is subjected to a review by several anonymous representatives of other ICCAs similar in terms of geography and sector. In this way, vested interests related to self-declared areas that do not meet the ICCA definition (e.g. does not achieve relevant biodiversity conservation goals) can be kept in check. The custodian communities as a collective are empowered to assess and take responsibility of the conservation efforts, as well as to maintain the quality of the data of the submissions. Given the fact that, only in Spain, there are several thousand of areas that could easily meet the ICCA definition, this process open the door of a more sustainable, democratic and effective conservation approach. The same process is currently being putting in place in Iran, Philippines and Taiwan, among other countries.