Anthropological Approaches To Advocacy And Traditional Right: developing local global feedback for policy advocacy on biocultural diversity

Principal Investigator: Dario Novellino
Co-investigator: Miguel Alexiades
Project dates: 2007-2009
Funding: "Global Biocultural Initiative Program" of the Christensen Fund (TCF)

Background and overall objectives:  Starting from the early 1990’s, international organizations have promoted statements and policy documents valuing traditional ecological knowledge, the need to respect indigenous livelihood practices, and the importance of forging partnerships with local communities. Despite all progress made at the international advocacy level, the stories and the constraints of local people are, all too often, not heard or listened to. As a result, global policies have seldom resulted in appropriate local policies. This project, drawing on a wide range of anthropological field methods, aims at generating global awareness of indigenous ecological knowledge and sustainable land management practices through networking and consensus building - with a view to mobilizing supportive policies to help sustaining biocultural diversity. Specifically it underwrites work with the shepherds in Central Italy (Mt. Aurunci Regional Park), Batak swiddeners and hunter-gatherers of Palawan (Philippines) and the Ese Eja of Western Amazonia (Peru and Bolivia) to establish digitally-mediated exchanges of spoken stories. This is to ensure that people’s unique perspectives and most intangible aspects of their knowledge be shared with each other and communicated to decision makers, thus having a stronger impact on the way in which policies on biocultural diversity are designed and implemented. Three pilot areas have been chosen for their potential to provide general models on the role of traditional knowledge in the management of protected areas, applicable to Mediterranean and Tropical regions - as well as to both developed and developing countries.

In particular the project aims to:

1. Encourage national and local governments and institutions to pilot new and innovative approaches that reflect the dynamic exchange of views between traditional stewards and other stakeholders, cross-culturally and cross-regionally,
2. Increase the potential of international advocacy to disseminate the content of national and international treaties/laws (e.g. CDB) to local communities, so that the former can become an advocacy resource for the people themselves,
3. Create active linkages between the global advocacy level and the local level.

Project tools and methodologies: The proposed tools will be grounded in those pioneering anthropological approaches aiming at communicating human experience and knowledge through visual and sensory means and by combining different representational forms.

• Participatory video and participatory assessment of audio-visual documentation is aimed at bringing together different stakeholders into conversation with each other. Selected video-clips highlighting the discrepancy between people’s traditional use of resources and top-down measures for environmental conservation will be shown to all stakeholders. Thus all participants in the project will have the same input, and their divergent and/or confluent views will be compared. It is believed that these exchanges will favour creative intellectual crossbreeding while generating important lessons for policy makers and project planners.
• Video-agreements: The project will also encourage the implementation of ‘video agreements’ entered between local communities and representatives of governments, international organizations and NGOs, based on the articulation of local expressions and leading to mutual understanding between decision makers and indigenous communities. Particular emphasis will be placed on the potential role of ‘video-agreements’ as a tool to be used in the context of those rights-based approaches grounded in the principle of 'Free Prior Informed Consent' (FPIC).
• Explicative tools to communicate the content of national/international laws and treaties on biocultural diversity to the appropriate local agents will be created. These tools, depending on the target users, will be both textual and non-textual (digitalized in the form of DVDs or CDs).
• 'Spoken Stories' and Culture Archives: Batak, Arunci shepherds and Ese Eja possess a wealth of knowledge about the natural environment and ecological processes. It is anticipated that such data presented in the form of spoken stories and, reordered in a digital archive, will support both legal and ecological arguments for local peoples to take a leading role in environmental management and economic development of their areas. The communities - as a whole - should be responsible for holding and managing the digital archives, using it for several purposes (e.g. sharing memories of the past, retrieving information, knowledge revitalization, etc), as well as a tool for conflict management and negotiation with external agents.
• A website on bio-cultural diversity: A project website will be hosted by the University of Kent and will be managed by the co-investigators in close coordination with the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing (CSAC). The website will include an interactive forum and data-base to support continuous dialogue on issues related to the erosion of traditional ecological knowledge and biodiversity conservation, especially in the context of natural parks and protected area systems. It will represent a valuable educational resource for students and practitioners in the field of conservation, ethnobiology, environmental anthropology and development.
  

Publications
Novellino, D. 2007. Tradiciones agro-pastoriles, diversidad biocultural, y cambio cultural en el Parque Regional Aurunci (Italia Central). El Pajar (Cuaderno de Etnografía Canaria), n.24, Agosto 2007. (pdf file)