4 posts tagged “environment”

Natural resource management planning has become a central activity in the management of resources across all levels of agency. Increasingly, management plans are being called for to secure rights to, and guide management of resources used or held by, indigenous people in less developed regions. A problem that is being encountered in the development of natural resource management plans and indigenous peoples is the differing understandings and perspectives each stakeholder has towards natural resources. While natural resource planners often break up a resource into its constituent parts, indigenous peoples often view them more holistically. This is especially true when it comes to what are known as common pool resources (CPR) and customary resource use norms associated with those natural resources.

In the context of common pool resources (CPR) that are used by indigenous communities, the development of natural resource management plans often involves formalizing the customary resource use norms or “unwritten rules” held by the local indigenous peoples. By documenting them in a format recognizable to non-indigenous professionals and government resource management bureaucracies such as through a management plan, a local resource management code, or a local ordinance the management of those natural resources can take on a collaborative dynamic with the local indigenous peoples. Likewise, the study of CPRs and common property management regimes has helped to advance understanding of indigenous and traditional resource management systems by recording and analyzing informal rule systems that govern resource use and management, and by proposing “design principles” associated with successful management regimes for CPRs.

Read more about Common Pool Resources, Management Policies, and Indigenous Peoples here.

Identifying the most vulnerable areas and groups living in these areas to global climate change with reasonable accuracy remains challenging since global as well as regional climate change models still lack detailed resolution to predict the types and magnitudes of changes to be expected at a regional or local level. Especially when it comes to direction of change in precipitation for some regions there is not sufficient knowledge available to make reliable predictions. Nevertheless, even though it is not possible today to isolate specific groups and local places of highest risk it is possible to identify broad regions which are likely to experience certain types of climate change and extreme events (Dow, Kasperson & Bohn, 2007).

The following maps superimpose the location of indigenous and traditional peoples (ethno-linguistic groups) on climate change prediction data from the IPCC (2007)2. The resulting maps show the coincidence of some areas of high concentration of indigenous and traditional peoples and areas of greatest predicted climatic change. Regions where these two conditions occur simultaneously may represent areas of particular interest or vulnerability. The particular interests and needs of indigenous and traditional peoples where change, even change which may be considered beneficial at a national or regional level (for example, increased precipitation in currently arid areas such as the Sahel) may give rise to potentially threatening changes in traditional livelihood systems, settlement patterns, land prices, etc.

Read more about Indigenous Peoples, Climate Change, and Areas At Risk here.

The South Central Gond indigenous people live in the forests and hills of India in Maharashatra and Andhra Pradesh, north of the Godavari River. They are essentially concentrated in the Chandrapur, Adilabad, and Garhichiroli districts. The Southeast Gond indigenous people live in the forests and hills of southern India. They are primarily concentrated in the state of Andhra Pradesh, south of the Godavari River and in bordering districts north of the river.

The South Central Gond speak a Central Dravidian language called Adilabad Gondi. Today, The Southeast Gond are bilingual, speaking both their native language, Koi Gondi, and the Telugu language. The Telugu, their bygone rulers and present neighbors, immovably influenced both the South Central and Southeast Gond indigenous peoples.

Read more about the Gond indigenous peoples and deforestation in south India here.

The A’ingae, or Cofan people, have lived between the Aguarico and Guamués rivers for centuries, long before the foundation of the Republics of Ecuador and Colombia, from the Azuela river up to the middle section of the Aguarico basin, and up to present-day Puerto Asís. The Cofan territory was next to the communities of the Siona and Tetetes nations. Long ago, the Cofan people amounted to 15,000 inhabitants (Ingita Gi A'indeccu'fa, 2002), and now, according to the information of the Federation of the Cofan Nation of Ecuador, there are only 162 families with a total of 849 people.

According to CODENPE (Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador – Council for the Development of Ecuador’s Peoples and Nations), Ecuador’s COFAN Nation is now in the province of Sucumbios, on the Aguarico river and in the middle section of the Dureno and Cuyabeno river basins; the main settlements are Dovino, Dureno, Sinangüe, Chandia Na’en and Zábalo.

Read more about oil impacts to indigenous peoples of Ecuador here.