Juan Chávez of Peru and Koku Agbee Koto of Togo discuss their communities’ efforts to preserve forests, at the WIN conference in Darwin. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Milagros Salazar
DARWIN, Australia, May 29 2013 (IPS)

This city in northern Australia brought them together to share their experiences this week. They are indigenous Shipiba people fighting indiscriminate logging in Peru’s Amazon jungle region and delegates from the Ando-Kpomey community in Togo, which created and protects a 100-hectare forest.

“Without the forest we are nothing – it’s like losing life itself,” said Juan Chávez, a Shipibo Indian from the eastern Peruvian region of Ucayali, in a conversation with IPS during a break in his participation in the World Indigenous Network (WIN) conference that ended Wednesday in Darwin, Australia.

Chávez and others have been working for 15 years to keep six Shipibo communities from being seduced by illegal logging for a quick profit, and to help restore the indigenous group’s tradition of forest preservation.

To that end, they designed communal development plans, based on reviving traditional knowledge on management of land, water and forest resources, with the support of the Association for Integral Research and Development (AIDER), a Peruvian NGO.

The 1,200 indigenous representatives from some 50 countries focused their attention Tuesday, the third day of the four-day WIN conference, on successful cases of reviving ancestral and traditional cultures and knowledge, under the premise that “sustainable development not only depends on modernity; it’s also important to look to our roots,” as Chávez put it.

Some of the cases, like the Shipibo experience presented by Chávez, have won prizes from the Equator Initiative, which brings together the United Nations, governments, civil society, businesses and grassroots organisations to acknowledge and foment local sustainable development solutions.

“We are not poor devils; we also come up with solutions,” Ecuadorean indigenous leader Manuel Tacuis said in his presentation at one of the WIN sessions. The delegation from Ecuador was the largest from Latin America, along with Brazil’s.

As the representatives of indigenous and local communities from around the world exchanged experiences, it became more and more clear that the everyday lives and the challenges faced by people in rural Africa were not so different from those of native people in the Amazon rainforest.

The community of Ando-Kpomey in the West African nation of Togo began over a decade ago to restore the forest on their land, which had been destroyed by the seasonal burning of grasslands by hunters.

Koku Agbee Koto, an avid 35-year-old representative of the community, told IPS that the destructive practice had finally been significantly reduced.

So far, more than 100 hectares have been reforested, benefiting around 2,500 villagers, he said.

But the Togolese and Peruvian representatives concurred that traditional knowledge was no longer sufficient to sustainably mange land and adapt to climate change.

“We have to appreciate both cultures: indigenous and scientific,” said Chávez, after admitting that there was still resistance among his people to recognising what science could contribute.

The indigenous and community delegates taking part in the WIN conference demonstrated their openness.

Koto, from Togo, constantly took notes on the different experiences shared by indigenous and local people from around the world, used his limited English to ask for more information, telephone numbers and email addresses, spoke “un poquito de español” with Chávez, while chatting easily in French when meeting with delegates from other French-speaking countries in Africa.

Koto was taken by the success of an ecotourism project in the Anja Miray community in
Madagascar, which he felt could be replicated in his village.

The Anja Reserve community-managed forest and ecotourism site, another Equator Prize-winner, generates income for the elderly, children and vulnerable segments of the community, who are assisted with basic services and scholarships, while restoring the forest and curbing desertification.

Víctor Samuel Rahaovalahy, one of the leaders of the reserve run by the Anja Miray association, told IPS that they were still looking for ways to generate more income and more effective methods to adapt to climate change.

“We need more capacity-building, not only for my community, but for surrounding ones as well,” Rahaovalahy said. “We all have to come together to fight desertification in a coordinated manner,” he added, saying the local communities and governments must work together more closely in order to get results.

Not all of the participants were clear on how to tackle negative developments in their territories or how to confront big challenges like the effects of climate change.

For over a decade, the Sami people in northern Sweden have faced unusually severe winters due to climate change. But they have not yet come together to confront the sudden changes in the climate in an organised way, despite their traditional knowledge, biologist Berit Inga, a Sami descendant, told IPS.

Inga said the Sami were more concerned about dealing with more immediate challenges, such as the activities of the mining industry.

But everyone at the conference agreed that it was not possible to come up with solutions in an isolated fashion.

The manager of the Equator Initiative, Eileen de Ravin, told IPS that successful local experiences should be taken up by governments in the design of public policies that recognise and value indigenous and community knowledge.

In the last decade, 152 of the roughly 2,500 nominated indigenous and local community projects won the Equator Initiative prize. The representatives of the winning organisations met at the conference Wednesday to discuss WIN’s future plans.

Indigenous activists Ángel Durán from Bolivia and Bernardette Angus from Australia share their experiences in conservation at the WIN conference in Darwin. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Milagros Salazar
DARWIN, Australia , May 28 2013 (IPS)

“Are you a park ranger?” IPS asked. “No, I am one of the owners of the territory,” Ángel Durán responded in a firm voice. The Bolivian indigenous leader is in this northern Australian city along with 1,200 other native delegates from over 50 countries for the World Indigenous Network (WIN) conference.

Durán, who was born in and lives on a collectively-owned native territory, is attending the conference in representation of eight native groups from Bolivia’s Amazon region that total more than 20,000 people.

Although he is not on the programme as an official speaker and can only communicate in Spanish, this is not stopping him from sharing his knowledge and experiences with other indigenous leaders walking from one auditorium to another at WIN headquarters in Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory.

The meeting, supported by the Australian government, runs May 26-29, with presentations of successful projects for the preservation of ecosystems and biodiversity, the sustainable use of protected natural areas, and the development and food security of indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other countries like Canada or Australia itself.

On Monday, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples James Anaya stressed the importance of governments recognising international instruments that protect the basic rights of native people.

Melissa George from Australia told IPS that the conference was a major contribution by the Australian government and a form of recognition that indigenous people were the first to use their knowledge to protect the territory.

George, who belongs to the Wulgurukaba aboriginal tribe, added however that there was still much to be done.

The activist has dedicated 20 years – nearly half her life – to developing projects for administering natural resources in aboriginal territories. She is now co-chair of the WIN National Advisory Group.

The international network of indigenous and local community land and sea managers recently became an official part of the United Nations after the government of Australia handed over its management to the Equator Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The initiative brings together the United Nations, governments, civil society, businesses and grassroots organisations to advance local sustainable development solutions and support the work of indigenous people around the world by means of capacity-building.

Eileen de Ravin, manager of the Equator Initiative, told IPS that this concerted effort opens up enormous possibilities for people from a South American country like Bolivia to learn directly what is happening in Canada or Australia.

“Our goal is to influence the governments to get them to respect and listen to these valuable experiences and solutions,” de Ravin said.

The Equator Initiative awards a prize every two years, recognising 25 outstanding local sustainable development projects. In the past decade, 152 indigenous community organisations, of 2,500 that have been nominated, have won the prize.

One of the presentations at the WIN conference was on the conservation of protected areas by indigenous and local communities in Canada, Australia, Sweden and Brazil by means of indigenous forest rangers, park rangers or environmental agents.

“The name doesn’t matter, the objective is the same: to make use of traditional knowledge to protect nature and culture from the different threats,” Brazilian activist Osvaldo Barassi with the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) told IPS.

ACT’s annual indigenous park ranger training programme provides conservation and land monitoring capacity-building to native communities, including the use of tools like GPS tracking technology.

Since 2005, the Brazilian organisation has trained 190 people from 30 native ethnic groups in forest management and conservation, which has enabled the communities to develop projects to monitor illegal logging in order to protect the local flora and fauna.

But in spite of the contribution made by the indigenous forest rangers trained by ACT, they receive no payment from the government for their work.

That is in contrast to Australia’s indigenous land stewardship programme, which has created Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) in more than 50 locales on traditional aboriginal lands over the last 15 years, covering a total of 43 million hectares.

Bernardette Angus, a park ranger from Western Australia, told IPS that it is indigenous people who have been caring for the plants and animals and protecting the land and the sea since a long time ago, and who are teaching young people to continue doing so when the current generation is gone.

In Bolivia, the federation of indigenous peoples from north of La Paz, led by Durán, are seeking to go one step further in their conservation efforts, and have asked the government of Evo Morales – the country’s first-ever native president – to legally recognise the “guardians” of community-owned indigenous land to enable them to levy penalties on those who invade their land and make illegal use of their natural resources.

Durán, who belongs to the Leko de Apolo indigenous community, said no government plan aimed at protecting biodiversity could leave out the communities. “Not even scientific knowledge can compare to the ancestral know-how of the local people. We take care (of nature) because it is our way of life,” he told IPS.

But while Barassi recognised the importance of indigenous knowledge, he warned that it was not always a guarantee in and of itself of the successful management of natural resources. For that, capacity-building is key, the ACT activist stated.

Participants at the conference agreed on the need to join forces to maximise results in the face of threats from illegal activities, large-scale private investment projects, or the effects of climate change.

“I never imagined that the forests could disappear, but it is happening,” said Joao Evangelista, a Brazilian park ranger who was unable to travel to Darwin, but sent a videotaped message presented by Barassi to an audience keen on cutting the distances between them.

“That’s why capacity-building is important; it’s a form of liberation for us, and of preparing ourselves to confront outside threats,” he said.