Strengthening role of indigenous communities for sustainable development

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

The Alaskan North Slope Inupiat and the Bering Sea Yupik whalers have, despite their cultural differences, formed an effective co-management arrangement during a decade of intense activity in defence of each group's respective culturally-based position to pursue whaling.

1. Traditional peoples who depended on their local ecosystems for their essential needs, have accumulated by trial and error a rich body of local environmental knowledge, and in several cases elaborated resource management systems, and developed institutions appropriate for implementing these systems. Biodiversity conservation appears to be integral to many traditional management systems from tropical forests to coastal fisheries. For example, some groups manipulate the local landscape to augment its heterogeneity, use conservation 'rules of thumb' in their management practices, and integrate the production of multi-species systems. Thus, self-interest of traditional peoples has been key to biodiversity maintenance. As traditional peoples are integrated into the global economy and come under various pressures, they often lose their resource base, and in the long run, their knowledge systems, social institutions, and their world view which shapes their relations with the environment. The process of decoupling of traditional peoples from their resource base is likely to reduce the resilience of their social systems, as well as their local ecosystems through biodiversity loss. The two are related, and the reduction of resilience will make both social and ecological systems more fragile. One challenge for biodiversity conservation is to learn from the knowledge-practice-belief complex of traditional peoples. But a perhaps more important challenge is to implement elements of it in systems which allow feedback from the environment, and respond to them in a more resilient way than do current day management practices.

2. In the past many development programs have failed because the users were neglected. Their knowledge and practices, means of communication, value systems, and sociocultural background in general were seldom taken seriously. This attitude is changing in the face of reality. It seems to be an appropriate time for researchers and scientists to reevaluate their importance, and restructure their research and development models accordingly so that mistakes made in the past will not be repeated in the future.

1. Recognizing
2. Promoting indigenous development
3. Improving participation
4. Improving existing communities
5. Helping tribal people
6. Advocating sustainable development

1. Using suitable technology to improve environmental management by indigenous peoples
2. Using indigenous education systems for education in sustainability
3. Strengthening role of indigenous women
4. Networking the fourth world
5. Involving local people in water management
6. Involving indigenous peoples in planning national policies
7. Including interests of indigenous people in international agreements
8. Improving education and training of indigenous peoples for sustainable self-development
9. Improving coordination among international programmes for indigenous peoples
10. Expanding regional cooperation on concerns and participation of indigenous peoples
11. Consulting with indigenous peoples in sustainable development programmes
12. Assisting programmes for sustainable self-development of indigenous peoples
13. Applying culture-based knowledge systems

1. Protecting indigenous habitats
2. Learning from indigenous values
3. Instituting integrated management of water catchments
4. Instigating community resources management
5. Creating modern ethnic communities

1. Strengthening policies to protect indigenous property
2. Strengthening legislation on the rights of indigenous peoples
3. Ratifying international conventions on indigenous peoples
4. Promotion of rights of indigenous tribal workers
5. Appointing indigenous peoples' focal point in international agencies

1. Denying right to traditional economies to indigenous populations

1. Unsustainable
2. Undeveloped
3. Underparticipation
4. Underdevelopment
5. Participation
6. Overdevelopment
7. Nonparticipatory
8. Nonglobalized
9. Development

1. Agenda 21