Cob Cottage, Chadlington, OX7 3NA, England, Tel: + 44 1608 676320, Email: marcus@fppwrm.gn.apc.org

This report brings together the results of five parallel investigations carried out by the author: a broad-ranging review of the available published and grey literature; a desk review of all PeFoR projects; interviews with interested staff of some of the major international government agencies active in the sector (GEF, IDB, World Bank, UNDP, FAO, IFAD, USAID, GTZ, NORAD (yet to do), EC, DFID, DGIS, CIFOR, ICRAF); interviews with PeFoR project partners (Native Lands, LATIN, Kemala-BSP, ELSAM, Pancur Kasih, LRC, PAFID, CDPC) and other NGOs active in the field (ERM, Kalpavriksh, WWF-India, Society for the Promotion of Wasteland Development, Lokayan, Ethnet, Earth Love Fund, IWGIA, Novib, IUCN, Northern Watershed Development Foundation, Project for Ecological Recovery, Ford Foundation, RMI, SEHD, NGO Forum on ADB, PSSC, IUCN-Netherlands, Rainforest Foundation (Norway)): and field visits and interviews with local communities and indigenous peoples’ organisations (IMPECT, Northern Farmers’ Network, All India Coordinating Committee for Indigenous Peoples, Pancur Kasih, and LBBT). I would like to thank all those who collaborated in these interviews and field studies.

Padellada, Gray and Newing 1998; Colchester and Erni 1999; IIED 1999.

Source: TORs for Sector Review.

E/CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7

AITPN 1999

Daes 1996b.

Gray 1995; Thornberry 1996; Kingsbury 1995; 1998.

Colchester 1999.

The following countries have ratified ILO Convention 169: Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay and Peru. The Soviet Union also endorsed the Convention in 1989 but the Russian Federation has yet to inform the ILO of its adherence to the Convention. The Venezuelan Congress endorsed the Convention in December 2000 but the full legal procedures have yet to be followed bringing this into law. The following countries have ratified ILO Convention 107: Angola, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Iraq, Malawi, Pakistan, Panama, Portugal, Syrian Arab Republic and Tunisia. Venezuela has incorporated ILO Convention 107 into national law but has not registered its adherence to the Convention with the International Labour Office.

Bennett 1978.

Article 1(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that all peoples have the right to self-determination. Although the UN’s Human Rights Committee has explicitly recognised that this right applies to Indigenous Peoples, with reference to Canada (Kambel and MacKay 1999), the UN’s draft declaration has not yet been accepted by governments exactly because it confers this right so explicitly. ILO Convention 169 (Article 1(3)) expressly avoids any determination on this issue.

Li 1999

For example, under international law ‘minorities’ enjoy no collective rights (Thornberry 1977).

Colchester 1986

Posey 1999

Colchester 1981; Hames 1991; Alcorn 1989; Redford and Stearman 1993;

Campbell and Hobley 1995; Poffenberger 1999; 2000.

Chirif, Garcia and Smith 1991; Lizarralde 1994 ; Colchester 1996; 1997; Marinissen 1998; Chincilla, Garrido, Aguilar and Salas 2000.

Colchester, Jackson and Kenrick 1999.

Schwatrzmann, Moreia and Nepstad 2000.

ONIC, CECOIN, GhK 1996.

Colchester 1996;1998.

CCPY 1999.

Colchester and Lohmann 1993; Verolme and Moussa 1999; WRM and FM 1998; WRM, FPP and PIPLinks 2000.

Alliance 1996:73. This document provides a more detailed assessment of the implications of the Rio agreements for Indigenous Peoples.

Alliance 1997.

Colchester 1990.

Kemf 1993; Colchester 1994; Ghimire and Pimbert 1995; Pimbert and Pretty 1994.

The Convention on Biological Diversity has been ratified by 174 countries. For an exploration of the legal protections available for indigenous knowledge see Simpson 1997.

IUCN 1994.

WWF 1996.

IUCN 1996.

WCPA 1999 (see web site). Whereas the original resolution emphasised the need to recognise Indigenous Peoples land rights, the WCPA guidelines conditions these rights on environmental performance. The unwarranted inclusion of these limitations is bound to cause controversy.

Padellada, Gray and Newing 1998; Colchester and Erni 1999.

Goodland 1981.

World Bank 1982.

World Bank 1991.

Griffiths 1999; van Nieuwkoop and Uquillas 1999.

Colchester 1999

Hamerschlag and Soltani 1999; Griffiths 1999.

Rainforest Foundation, 1998, Out of Commission: the environmental and social impact of European Development Funding in Tropical Forest Areas. Rainforest Foundation (UK), London.

DGIS, 1993, Indigenous Peoples in the Netherlands Foreign Policy and Development Cooperation. Informatie 11(e) 13 Mei 1993., The Hague.

Social policy advisers in DfID deny that there is a need to develop a policy on indigenous peoples in compliance with the EC resolution.

Technically the ‘KPHP project’ was conceived as two sub-projects – Senior Management Advisory Team and Provincial Level Forest Management - of the ‘UK Tropical Forest Management Programme’ which included three other sub-projects in Forest Research, Forest Training and Forest Conservation.

Indonesia: Towards Sustainable Forest Management, 1999, Final Report of the Senior Management Advisory Team and the Provincial Level Forest Management Project, 2 vols, DfID.

Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Programme: Strengthening Decentralised Institutional Arrangements and Policy Mechanisms for Sustainable and Equitable Forest Management in Indonesia. Draft V8.1, Programme Memorandum PRC (00) 20, June 2000.

See Colchester 1994 for a more detailed discussion. The definition of ‘incremental costs’ adopted by the GEF is signficantly different from the definition of ‘incremental costs’ adopted by the CBD. Article 20 of the CBD places the burden for funding the ‘incremental costs’ of implementing the Convention in the South on the North ie including national benefits that may accrue through compliance with the Convention. Community development and livelihood considerations fall through the gap between the two definitions.

World Rainforest Movement 1993.

Nicholas 1989; Alliance 1992; Alliance 1994.

Collins, Sayer and Whitmore 1991:76.

FAO 1997:186.

Colchester 1992; Colchester and Lohmann 1991.

Colchester and Lohmann 1993; Barraclough and Ghimire 1995.

WCFSD 1997; OED 2000.

Down to Earth Newsletter 35 Special Supplement ‘The 1997 Fires: Responsibility rests with Suharto. London.

WorldWide Fund for Nature, Briefing Paper, July 1998; Down to Earth Newsletter Nos. 35 and 36; Badawi, Walsh and Jhamtani 1998.

Simpson 1997:22, 206-7.

Colchester 1995.

Gray 1995.

ILO Convention 107 and 169 recognise the right of indigenous and tribal peoples to the control and ownership of their territories and lands, while the right of all peoples to self-determination is recognised in the International Covenants of Civil and Political Rights and of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These rights are most clearly set out in the UN Human Rights Commission's Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

By contrast, international law does not recognise that minorities enjoy such a wide range of rights particularly not the right to self-determination. This is why indigenous leaders are so concerned that their societies are recognised as 'indigenous peoples'.

Smith 1991, 1994; IWGIA 1986; Budiardjo and Soei Liong 1988; Filer 1990; George 1980; Lintner 1999.

Alliance 1998a, 1998b, 1998c.

Tamang 1996.

AITPN 1999.

Kingsbury 1996.

Mackerras 1994; Grunfield 1987:228.

Alfonso Martinez 1998.

cited in Kingsbury 1996:54.

President Suharto to UN Workshop on Human Rights, Jakarta, 26 January 1993; speeches by Indonesian and Malaysian Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Head of Chinese delegation to World Conference on Human Rights 14, 15, 18 June 1993.

Statement by Pramoedya Ananta Toer on Human Rights Day 10 December 1992.

Hansen 1996:29 cited in Erni 1996:17.

Many of these figures are considered highly unreliable or are based on government definitions of marginalised groups which do not embrace all those who consider themselves indigenous (and see page xx above).

Colchester 1995:63; cf Colchester 1986.

Tapp 1986; McKinnon and Bhruksasri 1986.

Dove 1985; Colchester 1990; Colfer 1997.

Sharma 1990:iii, 8, 14-16.

Devalle 1980; Moser 1982.

Douma et al. 1989; Guha 1991; Peluso 1992.

Guha 1991.

Tucker 1988, 1991; Colchester 1994.

With the exception of Latin America, the same model of forestry was also adopted, with modifications, by most other colonial governments.

Poffenberger 1990; Colchester 1992.

Repetto 1988; Porter and Ganapin 1988; Gadgil 1989; Colchester 1990; Dauvergne 1997.

Colchester 1994.

BBC Wildlife Magazine, March 1998.

Endicott 1979; Survival International 1983; Colchester 1986; Lim and Gomes 1990; DTE 1991; Collins et al 1991; Colchester and Lohmann 1993; Sklar 1995.

Evans 1995.

Sutlive 1978; Colchester 1989; Colfer 1997.

Colchester 1984; Duyker 1987.

Hong 1987; Colchester 1989; Cleary and Eaton 1995; Beavis 1995; ASI 1997; Colfer 1997.

Kelkar and Nathan 1991; Heyzer 1996.

The FAO's figures, while the only full data set currently available, are widely acknowledged to be unreliable. Detailed studies by the Centre for International Forestry Research and the Institute for Development Studies show that the FAO figures are based on both a flawed methodology (Angelsen and Kaimowitz 1998) and inaccurate and partial use of original sources (Fairhead and Leach 1998).

Dove 1985.

Tucker 1988.

Agarwal and Narain 1989; Colchester 1989, 1990.

WRI 1997; Colfer 1997.

Brosius 1986.

Langub 1988a, 1988b.

Colchester 1986; cf King (1993:167) who states that 'the traditional view of Borneo natives is that natural resources are held in trust for future generations'.

Conklin 1954; Colfer 1997.

de Beer and McDermott 1989; WRI 1997.

Freeman 1955; Richards 1961; Colchester 1989; Colfer 1997.

IMPECT 1998

Cernea 1989:iii.

IMPECT 1998; NPMHR 1998; CPA 1999.

Colchester 1994:26.

Bello et al. 1982.

Pearce 1992.

Drucker 1984; Fay 1987.

Survival International News 1985 (7):1.

Nicholas 1989.

Alliance 1998:18-19.

cited in Dorrall 1990:62.

Colchester and Erni 1999.

For an early expose of this gap see Colchester 1986.

The only exception this review uncovered was the UNDP’s Highland Peoples Programme in Vietnam and Cambodia, which does promote national policy dialogue on Indigenous Peoples.

Poole (1995a, 1995b) provides an early review of the field. Alcorn 1999 provides a recent and more comprehensive review of the usefulness of community mapping techniques.

In South and Central America disputes about who has intellectual property rights to maps have plagued some projects. Technical institutes set up especially to map indigenous lands have found themselves in open conflict with indigenous organisations in both Bolivia and Peru.

A preliminary treatment can be found in Lynch 1998 and see also Bruce 1999.

One of the best documented experiences of indigenous land loss as a consequence of individual titling comes from the USA. Under the Dawes Act of 1887, Indian Reservations were broken up into private land ownership titles, with the aim of encouraging free enterprise among the Indians and the development of tribal territories. By the time the Act was repealed in 1934 – with the imposition of another inappropriate systems of land holding and tribal governance – an estimated 60% of tribal lands had been lost (Anderson 1995).

International Labour Organisations Convention No 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and the United Nations’ Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Lynch and Talbott 1995:90.

As Leonen (1998:41) points out the law is not clear what is meant by ‘full participation’ in this context. It appears to entrench the tendency discernible in other aspects of Philippine natural resource law to condition indigenous rights on environmental performance.

Leonen 1998.

The problem has been widely noted from other parts of the world. Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon and pastoralist groups in East Africa have likewise suffered from the emergence of an unaccountable indigenous elite that has put personal profit ahead of their communities’ interests (see also Colchester 1982; 1983).

Indigenous activists admit they have had little opportunity to address these very real problems because the unstable political situation in the NE has forced them to focus on political negotiations, denunciations of human rights abuse and establishing civil society awareness of their fundamental problems. Reforms to deal with local level problems like land tenure, natural resource management and community development have had to wait until the political crisis is first resolved.

For more detailed discussions see Agarwal and Narain 1989; Colchester 1992

Li 1999a; 1999b; 1999c.

Heppel 1986. Among the Bidayuh the process has gone further. Primary forests have all been cleared and incorporated into the shifting cultivation cycle, under which lands are held by individual families and not by the village as a whole. The sense of collective rights has been attenuated (Grijpstra 1976). Concepts of property changed dramatically among Plains Indians in North America with the adoption of the horse (Anderson 1995) and among the Nenets of Siberia when they shifted from hunting and fishing to reindeer herding following the intrusion of the market into their area in the 17^th century (Golovnev and Osherenko 1999).

Von Benda-Beckman and van Meijl 1999.

Brosius, Tsing and Zerner 1998.

Hildyard, Hegde, Wolvekamp and Reddy 1998.

Freeman 1955:1.

France 1969.

Good 1986.

Leonen 1998:38.

AMAN- Alianzi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara. The auto-denomination chosen by the movement, masyarakat adat, is more accurately glossed as ‘people governed by custom’ – ‘indigenous peoples’ is the nearest equivalent term current in international law.

Down the Earth Newsletter 53 (Special Supplement) (1999).

It is important to note that this dilemma is one common to all human institutions, including major religions such as Christianity and Islam.

Similar conclusions were recently reached by the ODI based on its reviews of community-forest management initiatives in Latin America (Richards 1997; Richards 1999).

Among the Kenyah and Kayan peoples, traditional leaders comprised a village ‘aristocracy’ and acquired their authority through inheritance and not through election. Attempts to substitute traditional chiefs with new leaders elected by ‘commoners’ implies a radical break with customary law, which many villagers feel is disrespectful and dangerous. Many communities in northern Sarawak are thus divided between traditionalists, who remain loyal to the old leadership, and radical reformers, who find themselves simultaneously confronting their own leaders and the powerful logging and plantation interests of the State. These divisions in the indigenous communities, which have resulted from policies of indirect rule, have seriously weakened the Dayak land rights movement (Colchester 1989).

Pourtier 1989; Barnes 1992; Colchester 1994b.

Specifically the amendment recognises tribal self-rule in Schedule 5 areas (ie the tribal panchayats in Peninsula India). The rule has not been extended to the tribal peoples of the NE who are governed through Schedule 6.

Marwaha 1999.

The same conclusion was also reached by the World Bank (2000) in its recent review of the implementation of its forest policy.

Wanek 1996:88 (emphasis in original).

Anderson (1995) has made the same point, though from a rather different point of view, about the problems confronting indigenous self-determination in the United States. More attention needs to be paid to the traditional and imposed institutions of ownership and governance.

It is beyond the scope of this review to summarise or note all this literature. References to some key works are given in the bibliography. Notable reviews include Hobley 1996, Bruce 1999, Poffenberger and McGean 1996, Poffenberger 1999, Anderson 1999.

For useful summaries see Hobley 1996 and Poffenberger and McGean 1996.

Bruce 1999:85-86.

Joshi 1999.

Porter and Ganapin 1988; Kummer 1991

Poffenberger and McGean 1993

Colchester and Lohmann 1990; PER 1992; Colchester and Lohmann 1993; Lynch and Talbott 1994; Carrere and Lohmann 1996 ; Hirsch 1997.

MacKinnon and Bhruksasri 1986.

Conservation groups such as the Dhamanaat Foundation interviewed as part of this study claim to be unaware that the hill tribes feel discriminated against, suggesting either an extraordinary ignorance of the real situation of these peoples or an artful denial of the real problems these peoples face.

Lohmann 1999; Leungaramsri 1999.

During French colonial rule of Indo-china poppy cultivation was actively encouraged by officials. Taxes were even paid in opium during some periods in Laos. The practice spread widely throughout the Golden Triangle. The World Bank’s Highland Agriculture Development Project, for example, provided so little security to hill tribes involved in the scheme that participants gained neither citizenship papers or land rights in the process. Some communities were even torched and the inhabitants forcibly expelled into Burma by the armed forces during project implementation.

Colchester 1986; Secrett 1986; DTE 1991; Poffenberger 1990; Colchester and Lohmann 1993; World Bank 2000.

Fay and Sirait 1999. Much of the information which follows also comes from this paper as well as interviews with the authors and NGO activists.

Public Sector Reform Loan 1.

World Bank 2000.

Brosius, Tsing and Zerner 1998.