Note No. 08 June 1995 Participation and Indigenous Peoples Thecharacteristicsofindigenousgroupsmakeparticipatoryapproachesespeciallycriticaltosafeguardingtheirinterests in the development process. Such approaches, recognizing the right of indigenous peoples to participate actively in planning their own futures, are supported by major donors and international organizations, including the World Bank, but have proved very difficult to implement. They call for changes in attitudes, policies and legislation to address the key issues: recognizing rights to land and natural resources; ensuring culturally appropriate procedures for consultation and communication; and building on the strengths of traditional lifestyles and institutions. Why Support Participation? it especially difficult for the outsider to communicate with indigenous groups, understand Indigenous or tribal people, numbering at least 250 their institutions, or discern their needs. million throughout 70 different countries, have often been on the losing end of the development process. In In these circumstances, the participation of many cases, their resources have been exploited for the indigenous people in planning and managing their benefit of other groups in society and, in many own development is a means of safeguarding their countries, they are the poorest of the poor. Often they interests in the development process. The past experience political and economic discrimination and decade has seen growing recognition of the rights are perceived as backward or primitive. of indigenous peoples, supported by international legal instruments, to decide their own priorities Even when development policies and for the development or use of their lands and other programs have been designed specifically to resources, and to exercise control over their own improve the welfare of indigenous peoples, the economic, social and cultural development. approach has usually been paternalistic, seeking their cultural assimilation and ignoring the At the same time, from a practical point of view, strengths of indigenous institutions and a participatory approach to indigenous development knowledge (including environmental knowledge). is a means of improving the quality of projects. In This, in turn, can contribute to worsening poverty, communities whose institutions, leadership patterns social marginalization and ethnic resistance. and lifestyles are not well understood by outsiders, participation can ensure that projects and services The characteristics which distinguish are relevant to perceived needs, and that they are indigenous peoples include their strong attachment sustainable through indigenous institutions. To be to the land, their dependence on renewable natural effective, programs must be undertaken in resources, subsistence practices, distinct languages partnership with indigenous peoples, rather than and cultures, their historical identities as distinct planned for them or carried out among them. peoples, and often mistrust of outsiders. For development institutions and planners, the Key Elements in a Participatory Approach challenge is how to incorporate such diversity of culture, language, ecological adaptation and history Although the need for a participatory into development planning. Cultural barriers make approach is now widely accepted by international This note is based on the paper written by Shelton H. Davis and Lars T. Soeftestad as a contribution to the Participation Sourcebook. Copies of the full paper are available from the Social Development Department, of the World Bank, Washington, D.C. 20433, Fax (202) 522-3247. Dissemination Notes represent the views of their authors and are not official publications of the World Bank. development agencies it is difficult to implement. Colombia is one of the countries to have set Obstacles include existing national policy and an example in establishing a legal and policy legislative frameworks, widespread prejudices, a framework which supports indigenous tendency on the part of outside NGOs to control participation. Although Colombia maintains a rather than facilitate, and a lack of development special office within its Ministry of Government planning and management skills on the part of to deal with indigenous matters, its constitution indigenous peoples themselves. recognizes the rights of indigenous communities to control their lands and natural resources and In Bank operations, the challenge is typically their internal political affairs. Each recognized confronted in two contexts. The first is in mandatory indigenous community has its own council, with Environmental Assessments or Indigenous Peoples the power to decide on the use of the community's Development Plans, intended to identify and land and resources, to resolve internal disputes, mitigate potentially adverse effects of Bank and to negotiate health, education and other supported projects on the livelihoods of indigenous programs with regional development peoples. The second is in a new generation of Bank- corporations and the national government. Recent funded projects where indigenous peoples are the Colombian legislation also provides for the direct primary beneficiaries. Critical issues for the task transfer of government resources to these councils manager on these new projects are outlined here. for projects which they design and execute. The Legal and Policy Framework Rights to Land and Natural Resources Government willingness to devolve some Despite some recent progress, legal degree of autonomy in decision making to recognition of the customary rights of indigenous indigenous communities is a precondition of peoples to their ancestral lands is often lacking, successful projects. Judgements must then be and many development programs have to deal made on whether legislative or policy reforms are with the question of indigenous land tenure needed to support such participation in the security and natural resource rights. decisionmaking process. Many of the line agencies or ministries responsible for Bank legal staff, and lawyers within client relationships with indigenous people are weak. countries, can help task managers through the They lack professionally trained staff and often complexities of national land, resource and take a paternalistic approach. In these cases, environmental legislation as it relates to reforms are needed before a participatory project indigenous peoples. In the Laos Forest can succeed. Local and regional elites may also Management and Conservation Project, for be an impediment to authentic indigenous example, one of the Bank's lawyers reviewed participation, even where an adequate legislative national forestry and land legislation relating to and policy framework exists (Box 1). the customary rights of ethnic minorities in Box 1 The Politics of Indigenous Participation Projects which incorporate indigenous consultation and participation need to take into account ongoing and complex political situations. Without a good understanding of these dynamics, even the most well designed projects can lead to unforeseen turmoil and frustration. An example is the Indigenous Peoples Component of the Bank-funded Eastern Lowlands Natural Resource Management and Agricultural Development Project in Bolivia. The purpose of the Indigenous Peoples Component is to provide land tenure security and other services to several Ayoreo and Chiquitano Indian communities in the Eastern Lowlands. Originally prepared in a highly participatory manner by a regional Indian federation in collaboration with a non-Indian technical assistance NGO, the component encountered political obstacles immediately following project effectiveness. The precipitating event for these problems was a protest march by the Indian federation, calling for more indigenous control over forest resources. This soon escalated into a major confrontation between the federation and the regional development corporation (the project implementing agency) over who should have control of the component. The Bank found itself in the unenviable position of trying to negotiate their differences, many of which pre-dated the protest march. Unable to find a solution after long meetings, the Bank accepted the redesign of the component, which regrettably reduced the power of the indigenous federation and put more power into the hands of an implementing unit within the regional corporation. legends, folk tales and proverbs for the oral Box 2 transmission of knowledge and culture. Modern Community Participation in Bilingual Education schooling of indigenous children has proved more Although ethnic Vietnamese constitute the bulk of effective when it includes instruction in both Vietnam's population, there are 53 ethnic minorities living vernacular and national languages and when it mostly in the mountain areas. The Bank funded Primary is bicultural or multicultural in content. Education Project contains a special Ethnic Minorities Education Component which will finance a Effective communication depends heavily on comprehensive package of educational inputs to minority children. This package, premised on the importance of the the element of trust. Through historical vernacular language and of community participation, experience, indigenous people have learned to be consists of policy measures, pedagogical activities, cautious of "benevolent" outsiders, be they provision of physical facilities and institution building. missionaries, government officials, teachers or To implement the component, existing provincial and local anthropologists. Those individuals or level committees will be involved in teacher training, organizations which have been able to gain their textbook production and maintenance of local schools. trust have usually done so through long years of Similarly, in the Second Primary Education Project in contact, learning and respecting their languages Mexico, the use of bilingual school teachers and pedagogical materials in the vernacular languages is combined with a and cultures. If such individuals or organizations strong element of community participation. Such can be brought into the project preparation participation is linked to the country's overall poverty process, there is a much better chance of alleviation program, and includes the involvement of introducing culturally acceptable mechanisms for community committees, municipal education councils, consultation and participation. parents' associations and school councils. Building on Traditional Strengths The traditional lifestyles of indigenous peoples upland villages. This review provided the Bank involve subsistence strategies which use locally with the necessary information to raise the subject available natural resources to satisfy their basic with the government and to include provisions needs, while maintaining a balance with their in the project for recognizing and regularizing environment. There are many unfortunate examples customary land rights. of programs for indigenous development which have undermined these traditional subsistence The Bank has also had experience, in the strategies without providing socially and Philippines and Brazil for example, in improving ecologically viable alternatives. The most successful the institutional capacity of the government programs with indigenous peoples, such as the West agencies responsible for the titling of indigenous Bengal Forestry Management Program (Box 3), are lands. This experience has demonstrated the those which take traditional environmental benefits to be gained from indigenous participation knowledge and livelihood systems as the given in physical mapping and land demarcation. basis upon which to build new knowledge, technologies and economic activities. Culturally Appropriate Communication Similarly, the most successful projects are In designing consultation and communication building on existing institutions, instead of procedures with indigenous peoples, several creating new ones to deal with specific special aspects need to be taken into account: their development tasks. In the Matruh Natural distinct languages; their traditional means of Resource Management Project, for example, transmitting knowledge and values; and their among the Bedouin of Western Egypt, using the mistrust of outsiders. bayt--the Bedouin local lineage group--as the basis for project activities has inspired the The language issue is central, since few confidence of the Bedouin population, including indigenous people--especially women or Bedouin women. As a result, it has avoided many elders--speak the national language fluently. of the pitfalls of earlier projects which attempted Hence consultations need to be held in the to introduce Western style cooperatives. vernacular language with the help of skilled interpreters. Development strategies for Social assessments, in which community indigenous education (Box 2) also need to take members participate as partners rather than mere into account the traditional importance of informants, are used to improve understanding medicine. Some of the best experiences with Box 3 capacity strengthening have come from exchanges Tribal Women and Forestry among indigenous peoples themselves. For The West Bengal Joint Forestry Management Program is example, in Latin American countries, NGOs have considered to be a model of participatory forest facilitated workshops in which indigenous peoples management. One of its most important aspects is the way in which tribal women, their traditional from different tribes and linguistic groups exchange environmental knowledge and their livelihood strategies experiences about land protection, mapping and have been incorporated into the program. In most areas, natural resource management. the recognition of the rights of tribal women to collect and market leaves of Sal and Kendu trees has been the Direct Funding major incentive which has led to the program's economic Many of the first generation Bank projects with and institutional success. indigenous peoples allocated funds to the national In the village of Pukuria, women gather the leaves for six government agencies responsible for indigenous months of each year for the purpose of making plates, some 700,000 of which are exported monthly by the village. development. The typical result was expansion of Minor forest products represent the primary occupation the government agency concerned, with little direct and most important source of income for Pukuria's tribal benefit to the indigenous communities. In Brazil, women. Given the low investment costs for re-establishing for example, where the Bank promoted large sal forest productivity, combined with the benefits of investments in increasing the staff and protecting the upper ridge tracts where forests are located, this system seems to have considerable potential for infrastructure of the National Indian Foundation, increasing employment and income earning opportunities, the impact was minimal in such important areas while reducing soil erosion levels. as natural resource protection, indigenous health and community economic development. of the indigenous social structure and institutions on which to base development strategies, and to In more recent projects, therefore, the goal is assist the communities in determining how best for funds to be controlled and managed by to adapt their institutions to new purposes. Social indigenous people themselves, preceded by the assessment techniques can also reveal the necessary capacity building. Group-based existence of conflicts with implications for lending schemes, where groups rather than participation, for example between traditional individuals are responsible for protection against and modern institutions or sources of authority. default in repayments, have proved adaptable to the finance needs of poor indigenous populations, As in any other social groups, strengthening the as the principle of joint liability is often an capacities of indigenous peoples (Box 4) to evaluate important element in traditional systems of social options and implement their own development control. These lending schemes increase the programs requires training in basic skills, and self-confidence of their members and demonstrate technical assistance in areas such as management, the capacity of indigenous populations to topography, forestry, agriculture, marketing and participate in the development process. community health care. However, it also involves promoting and strengthening traditional systems, for example of natural resource management and Box 4 Investing in Capacity Strengthening Promoting training and capacity strengthening may be one of the best investments for the economic development of indigenous communities. The Bank's Latin American and Caribbean Region's Environment Unit (LATEN), for example, has launched a program to assist indigenous organizations in the following activities: defining their own development strategies and proposals; strengthening their institutional structures in areas such as personnel management, training programs, budgeting and finance; and improving their negotiating skills to finance their own development proposals. The program is financed through grants to government agencies and/or indigenous organizations from the Bank's Institutional Development Fund. Thus far, programs have been designed or are under preparation in 10 countries. Each training program contains a consulting seminar, a series of workshops, a monitoring and evaluation system, and an evaluation seminar. Many of the seminars take place in the regions where indigenous people live, and all of them focus on indigenous values, cultures and philosophies, as well as modern management and development planning skills.