The development dilemma: sustaining resources, improving livelihoods.

Often called the guardians or caretakers of the earth, indigenous people share a profound attachment to and stewardship of their environment, which encompasses many of the world's most valuable and vulnerable ecosystems, including the Arctic, tundra, mountains, boreal woodlands, riverine and coastal zones, semi-arid rangelands and tropical forests.

In order to survive for millennia on these fragile environments, native people have developed a holistic knowledge of their land and resources that many contemporary societies lack. Where most of humankind tends to seek dominion over the natural world, the approach of people is the very essence of sustainable development--development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to survive and flourish.

"It is only the new sensibilities the rest of us have developed over the grave ecological damage we are doing that allows us now to appreciate the way indigenous peoples instinctively relate to the environment wise conduct their lives", General Assembly President Stoyan Ganev stated in launching the International indigenous Year on 10 December 1992. "Instead of following indigenous peoples' example of how to love and how to live with their land, too often we have coveted it and tried to expropriate it."

Indeed, indigenous societies employ some of the most successful, sustainable and environmentally-friendly methods of resource management and land use, including nomadic pastoralization, shifting various forms of agro-forestry, terrace farming, hunting, herding and fishing. Such traditional agricultural methods promote land conservation and biological diversity.

Moreover, their religious practices often involve setting aside forests and other lands as sacred preserves for wildlife, spirits and deities. Indigenous people also possess extensive knowledge of herbal medicine, soils, plants, animals and climate.

The Kayapo people of Brazil, for example, practice sophisticated methods of cultivation, such as seed selection and crop rotation, to ensure regrowth and replenishment of the forest. A Kayapo leader has explained: "I am trying to save the knowledge that the forests and this planet are alive, to give it back to you who have lost the understanding."

Many indigenous groups attended the UN Conference on Environment and Development--known as the Earth Summit--in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, and left their mark on two of the Summit's main achievements: the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, a broad statement of principles outlining the rights and responsibilities of States towards the environment; and Agenda 21, a far-reaching action plan for sustainable development.

Principle 22 of the Rio Declaration states: "Indigenous people and their communities . . . have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests and enable their effective participation in the achievement of sustainable development."

Agenda 21 also views indigenous people as fundamental to environmental recovery and recommends using their experience and knowledge in sustainable development. Among other things, the document calls on Governments and international organizations to empower indigenous communities, provide more and better safeguards against environmentally unsound activities that could affect indigenous people or their lands, and take measures to improve the overall quality of life of indigenous people.

International lending agencies, such as the World Bank, have also pledged to be more sensitive to the concerns of indigenous people when making decisions about development projects.

One example: the international Fund for Agricultural Development recently launched a $2-million project to promote the role of some 120,000 indigenous inhabitants of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela in the sustainable management of the Amazon forests.

Enormous gap

An enormous gap remains, however, between the goals set forth in Rio and the plight of indigenous people. in the last 40 years, their lands have come under relentless pressure as Governments, development banks, national and transnational corporations, and entrepreneurs search for resources to meet the growing demands of high-consumption societies and fast-swelling populations in developing countries.

Deforestation has devastated the homelands of millions of indigenous people, particularly in Asia and South America. In Sarawak, Malaysia, home to 220,000 tribal peoples collectively known as Dayaks, it is estimated that 3 hectares of ancient virgin forest are cut down every minute--faster than anywhere else on earth.

Progress means destruction

Anderson Mutang Urud of the Kelabit people of Sarawak lamented to the General Assembly on 10 December 1992: "The Government said it was bringing progress and development, but . . . the so-called progress means only the destruction of our culture and the demoralization of our people. The Government said it was creating jobs for the people, but those jobs will disappear along with the forest. in 10 years, the jobs will all be gone; and the forests which have sustained the people for thousands of years will be gone with them."

Indigenous people are also at risk from development projects, such as dam-building, irrigation and mining, which flood, strip and ruin their traditional lands. Similarly, waste dumping in oceans, wetlands and coastal areas has tainted indigenous fishing grounds. Acid rain has killed thousands of lakes and vast forest tracts in North America and northern Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, home to Saami and other indigenous people. Nuclear testing has exposed Pacific islanders to unacceptable levels of radioactivity.

Unfortunately, indigenous people have also engaged in unsustainable practices. Like other poor people, they often must choose between short-term survival and long-term environmental health. Some have had to hunt wildlife to near extinction and cultivate marginal lands using destructive slash and burn agriculture. Nevertheless, experts say, the planet's most healthy ecosystems tend to be found in indigenous areas.

The role of indigenous people in the practice of sustainable development was the focus of a meeting of representatives of Governments and indigenous groups in Santiago, Chile, in May 1992, before the Earth Summit. Participants adopted a set of working principles, stating that indigenous people should determine their own development, control their own institutions and use their resources as they see fit.

The draft Universal Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples states that indigenous people have the right to:

* recognition of their distinctive and profound relationship with the "total environment of the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally occupied or otherwise used" and to "own, control and use" those lands;

* protection and rehabilitation of the total environment and productive capacity of their lands and territories, and

* engage freely in their traditional and other economic activities, including hunting, fishing, herding, gathering lumbering and cultivation.

Early-warning system

In a sense, indigenous people constitute an early-warning system for environmental problems. As the earth is the core of their culture, the indigenous are among the first to suffer when unsustainable practices encroach upon their existence.

Preservation of indigenous people is, therefore, indissolubly linked to the fate of their lands and natural resources. Says Chilean expert Mario Ibarra: "Indigenous peoples have a message for the world about their relationship to life and nature. Their concept of development goes against and beyond that of individual development: the land is sacred, it is not merchandise to be exploited, but a base of life for all. The land should be preserved for future generations."

South America: Saving the Yanomami

By far the most grievous environmental catastrophe to have befallen indigenous peoples--one that threatens not only their livelihoods and social fabric, but their very existence--is the ongoing destruction of the world's tropical rain forests. Home to 50 million indigenous people, rain forests are being logged to feed a lucrative export market and burned to clear new land for crops or grazing.

The results have been devastating: flooding; loss of biological diversity; desertification; destruction of sacred sites; disruption of traditional economic activities, such as fishing and hunting; forced relocation and displacement. The fallout has also included poverty, mental anguish, alcoholism, prostitution and high suicide rates, especially pronounced among the young.

Perhaps nowhere is the siege more evident or well-publicized than in South America's Amazonia--the majestic basin covering 7 per cent of the Earth's surface and comprising more than half of the world's biological heritage. just one hectare of the Amazon's lush forests contains more tree species than all of North America. Yet, of the 6 million to 9 million indigenous people who inhabited this paradise, only a few dispersed groups remain. in this century alone, as many as 90 entire tribes have ceased to exist.

In the Amazon forests of Brazil, the Yanomami Indians--numbering less than 10,000. but still the largest single Indian tribe on the planet still practising the traditional way of life --have not only seen their homelands disappear to deforestation, but also had their health devastated by pollution and disease.

Prospectors invaded Yanomami lands in the mid-1980s in search of gold and diamonds. The mercury they used poisoned nearly 1,500 kilometres of the Amazonian river system, while the miners themselves brought in diseases unknown to forest dwellers. The result: more than half of the Yanomami population has been afflicted with measles, malaria, syphilis or other diseases. Between 1987 and 1989 alone, some 15 per cent of the Yanomami died from disease or malnutrition.

The Yanomami's plight sparked a global outery to save the Amazon rain forests and their inhabitants--a campaign which has recently begun to pay off. On 15 November 1991, Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello decreed the demarcation of 9.4 million hectares of the Amazon forests--an area comprising 11 per cent of Brazil's territory--as a permanent reserve for the Yanomami.

Such policies are not only key to the continuing survival of the 400 ethnic groups--with a population of about 1 million--who endure in the Amazon but also are essential to sustainable management of the valuable region.