Developing a partnership of indigenous peoples, conservationists, and land use planners in Latin America

Policy, Planning, and Research Working Papers - Environment
Recommendations for working in partnership with indigenous peoples, recognizing their land rights, incorporating their environmental knowledge into wildlands and native area planning, and paying more serious attention to the economics and resource implications of local activities to harvest wild resources - especially in environmentally delicate areas such as tropical rainforests. The major finding of the report is that a fundamental shift (a paradigm shift in the language of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn) has started in the way in which the international conservation community has come to view the issue of planning in areas which are occupied and used by indigenous peoples. Under the traditional paradigm, represented by several National Parks, wildlife reserves and other types of protected areas where indigenous peoples have aboriginal claims, indigenous peoples are allowed to continue to occupy and use the resources of these areas but only so long as they use the natural resources sustainably. This use, agreed with the park authorities, should reconcile the needs of both the indigenous peoples and the conservationists. Experience has found that these needs can be reconciled and made compatible, although this is far from being routine. Clearly major deforestation or firearm hunting for commerce by indigenous peoples are not compatible with wildlands protection.

Where indigenous people and park authorities do not agree, then either the park or the people are encouraged to move. (author)