Recommendations and Action Plan

The symposium devoted three days to formulating recommendations for IK research and development, and to drafting an action plan for the IK network. First, four subgroups discussed guidelines and recommendations for:

• Recording of IK and preparation of manuals
• Communication, utilization and dissemination
• Research issues
• Policy issues

An issue discussed several times but not given much attention in the recommendations is the validity and economic value of IK. Many studies remain descriptive and fail convincingly to support their arguments about the benefits of IK. There is a clear need to compile studies that demonstrate such benefits. There is also a need to test the validity of IK against scientific criteria. Cost/benefit analyses comparing IK with Western technologies are one way to tackle this issue, but such studies are often difficult--not least because of the complexity of IK. The symposium decided to make a start by compiling instances where IK has been successfully applied. Julian Inglis of TEK undertook to guide this effort.

Recommendations

General Recommendations

1. Individuals and organizations involved in IK research and development should be aware that:
   • The ultimate goal of research on IK is its application in development and not its purely academic use within the scientific community.
   • Local people should be informed about and involved in IK research from the very beginning. Methodologies are needed to facilitate this process.
2. Mechanisms have to be developed for local people to keep or gain control of their own knowledge and to prevent misuse of local knowledge through outsiders.
3. The IK network should include or closely collaborate with indigenous and other local peoples and indigenous organizations.

1. The network should develop field methodologies for recording indigenous knowledge and decision-making systems, identifying and understanding the structures and functions of indigenous organizations, and describing indigenous approaches to innovation and experimentation.
2. A general manual for IKS research should be compiled. This manual should be made available to all national centres and should guide community-based IK research and the production of specific regional and culturally appropriate manuals.
3. The network should produce different types of manuals to train:
   • Outsiders in methods of IK research, and
   • Communities to become partners in the study and application of IK.
   The next section contains guidelines for these manuals.
4. A secretariat should be established with responsibility for:
   • Ensuring that perspectives from all levels of the IK network are considered in the guidebook design, and that specific production tasks are assigned.
   • For obtaining financial support for consultations and book production.

1. General guidelines
   • Manuals should promote the ethical stance and community- based principles of IK research.
   • Manuals should emphasize IK research as an adaptive process. Goals are to generate knowledge in forms communities can use, to preserve and enhance their ability to innovate and experiment, and to enable them to choose among a diversity of development alternatives.
   • Training manuals should start with a clear statement of the principles and goals of IK research--which is holistic, diachronic, interdisciplinary, dynamic, and focussed on community-based needs and participation. They should be culturally and ethically appropriate. They should emphasize that all participants in the development process are students as well as teachers, and that IK research is a partnership based on mutual respect.
2. Guidebooks for practitioners
   • Manuals should cover disciplinary approaches to understanding IK and making it useful. Rather than presenting formulae for 'banking' IK, they should focus on questions for researchers and participants by discipline, and on how these questions can be incorporated into community-based experimentation. They should provide guidelines for locating and recording IK in ways that are sensitive to communities' knowledge structure and social structure. This will help ensure that all age, gender and social classes are considered in project design and implementation.
   • Case studies should be included to demonstrate how historical, physical and social processes stimulate IK innovation and use, and how a balanced consideration of these processes is necessary for the successful application of IK for sustainable development.
   • Manuals should cover how different disciplines can be used by both communities and researchers for designing community- based experiments in various community sectors. A preliminary list of these sectors includes: agriculture, non-agricultural techniques, fisheries and aquaculture, livestock, animal health, human health, the various sectors of environmental and natural resource management (social forestry, game management, minor forest-products management, etc.), and global organization.
   • Because these categories reflect academic divisions, the manuals should also offer guidelines by which researcher and community partners work together to define sectors appropriate to the communities, and by which communities develop their own capacity for problem definition, experimentation, and evaluation.
   • Manuals should also present proven methods for designing, conducting and evaluating the success of a community-based development programme. These will include the production of questionnaires, interviewing techniques, and video documentation.
   • Discussion of these techniques should emphasize their appropriate adaptation to cultural circumstances and the production of information for use by the communities. The manuals should also cover the production of indexes or statistics for evaluating the success or failure of projects, and for the communities' monitoring of their own development process. Since the final measure of progress in development rests with the communities themselves, manuals should aid communities in defining criteria of success and in developing indexes for evaluating IK projects.
   • The manuals should also discuss how to communicate results to state, intergovernmental, non-governmental and private agencies involved in development funding, planning and administration.

1. Methods for archiving IK should be developed.
2. Archiving should rely on culturally appropriate institutions, communication channels, and education techniques and should facilitate:
   • The preservation and use of IK within the communities themselves.
   • The exchange of information among the development community.
3. Knowledge banking should always follow ethical guidelines for the use and release of IK, based on principles such as informed consent and right-to-know, intellectual property rights, compensation rights, breeders' rights, rights to choose, cultural rights, and other generally recognized human rights.
4. A secretariat should be formed to facilitate the exchange of information among the centres. Functions of the secretariat would include:
   • Setting up electronic mail facilities among the members of the network, and establishing a means of passing electronic materials to members without such facilities.
   • Establishing a clearing house for distributing publications, records, educational materials, and other forms of information on IK to the national centres.
   • Developing a standardized format for regular information exchange and the indexing and cataloguing of the various centres' research activities. These activities would include:
     1. Building standard thesauri for cataloguing IK research to be used by all centres.
     2. Building specialized community-based and center- based thesauri for cataloguing results of national inventories.
     3. Collecting standardized bibliographic references on IK to create a global database.
     4. Creating regular indexes of centres' holdings and projects. These will be shared with the network.
     5. Creating a database of databases related to IK research, and working out standards for reporting the results (such as soil taxonomies, taxonomic systems for non-human species, cultural classification systems such as the Human Relations Area Files, and so on).
     6. Creating a database of individuals, networks and organizations involved or interested in IK research. This should include governmental, non-governmental, academic and private institutions that take conventional development approaches, that favour the use of IK in development, or that favour community-based development strategies without necessarily incorporating an IK perspective.
     7. Creating a database of institutions that might offer funding for IK research, with details of the application procedure, the programmes involved and the points of contact.
5. National centres should work out schedules and mechanisms that guarantee regular sharing of information within the international network and their participant communities.

Utilizing IK

1. Local-level user group: Villagers/knowledge-holders
   • National centres, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and peoples' organizations (POs) should facilitate the exchange of information on IK between farmers. Mechanisms include organizing farmers' cross-visits, encouraging self- documentation in the form of folk media or simple books, and the exchange of these between villages.
   • National centers should take the lead in enhancing the pride local people have in their own knowledge. This can be done, for example, by making case studies of successful IK available for broadcasting on radio and TV.
   • Organizations and individuals involved in IK research and use should develop mechanisms by which villagers have access to the materials (knowledge) drawn from them. This could be through simply-written reports, folk museums, newsletters, and discussions, workshops, and dialogues. Information local people do not wish to disseminate (e.g. trade secrets), should not be circulated.
2. Local and facilitator-level user group: Educators and their audience
   • To raise the awareness of and appreciation for IK of both students and teachers, information on IK should be taught to village children as early as during primary education.
   • In collaboration with local people, teachers, NGOs and other organizations, national centres should:
     1. Develop relevant educational materials for schools.
     2. Encourage informal educational methods such as asking students to observe and record IK in their own families (Appalachian model) or to help farmers record their own knowledge.
3. Facilitator user group: Extension and development agents
   • In collaboration with local people, teachers, NGOs and other organizations, national centres should develop training modules on IK, to be introduced into in-service training for development agents and pre-service training at colleges, polytechnics, universities, and training institutions.
   • Practical field exercises (e.g. research assignments) for extension workers should be conducted to sensitize them to the importance of IK. The exercises should be done in collaboration with local people.
   • Special emphasis should be placed on this user group, given the intrinsic nature of their job responsibilities in the implementation of rural development programmes and projects of both government organizations (GOs) and NGOs.
4. Facilitator user group: Researchers
   • The global IK network and the scientific community involved in IK research should emphasize the application of information on IK rather than its pure scientific value.
   • Scientific institutions should provide incentives for researchers to engage in IK research. Examples include providing outlets for publications and conducting conferences, seminars and workshops.
   • IK researchers should involve local people and use local venues during field work.
5. Facilitator level user group: Policy makers Multidisciplinary teams from national and regional centres should collaborate with local people, NGOs and other organizations to:
   • Develop guidelines and recommendations for policy-makers on ethical issues, compensation of local people and intellectual property rights in IK research and use.
   • Develop short and precise briefing kits (e.g. on success stories or cost-benefit analyses of IK projects).
   • Prepare or facilitate the preparation of policy papers or statements (White Papers).

Research on IK

1. General recommendations
   • IK research should consider both emic and etic aspects, i.e. the viewpoint of the villagers and the viewpoint of the outsiders.
   • Field research on IK should be conducted by multidisciplinary teams whenever possible.
   • IK researchers should have respect for IK and indigenous people and should collaborate with local people in all phases of the research.
   • IK research should be gender-oriented.
2. Research gaps
   • Refinement of research methodologies for documenting IK systems.
   • Inventories of IK and organizational structures.
   • Sustainability of local practices.
   • The impact of new constraining circumstances on IK, and the elasticity and adaptability of IK under pressure.
   • Development of evaluation criteria for IK.
   • Indigenous communication channels and their application in sustainable development.
   • Use of IK for sustainable development.
   • Development of models and guidelines for contemporary resource management involving IK.
   • Indigenous systems for enhancing soil quality.
   • Utility of IK and innovations from one ecological zone to a similar zone in a different part of the world.
   • Cross-cultural ecological economies among non-Western peoples.
   • Indigenous customary laws and norms that relate to environmental management.
   • Indigenous systems of environmental accounting.
   • Misuse of pesticides and agro-chemicals by indigenous peoples, and methods to inform indigenous peoples about their environmental impact.
   • Indigenous concepts of plant pathology and indigenous mechanisms for pest control.
   • The role of primary and elementary education in promoting or displacing local knowledge in children.
   • Socialization of children into specific fishing activities.
   • Socialization studies of how indigenous environmental knowledge is taught to children.
   • Formal and informal mechanisms to reproduce cultural templates in resource management (or mismanagement).
   • Mechanisms to involve local people in the development of national and regional centres.
   • The extent to which movements in the developed nations are derived from the values and practices of indigenous cultures (e.g. the holistic health, environmental and home school movements).

1. Recommendations specific to IK networks
   • The existing IK centres should jointly develop and implement a communication strategy to ensure that the public and private sectors--including government and non-government development agencies, universities and technical institutions- -become fully aware of the practical value and relevance of IK to development.
   • National, regional and global IK centers should systematically promote and facilitate collaboration and coordination between development and development research organizations involved in IK activities.
   • An individual-based International Association of Indigenous Knowledge System Researchers and Practitioners should be formed that could be accessed by bilateral and multilateral aid agencies and NGO development institutions for consultative assignments. This measure should include the establishment of a Coordinative International Secretariat office with an adequate funding base.
   • An International Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Development Symposium should be held annually, at least until 1995, after which the symposium should be held every second year. The symposia should maintain a policy development focus and invite the participation of key indigenous POs, major bilateral and multilateral development agencies, and widely influential development and development-research NGOs.
2. General recommendations
   • Bilateral donor agencies should accelerate the untying of official development assistance in favour of increasing reliance on and developing local resources, including those of human knowledge and skills.
   • Systematic efforts should be made by development and education authorities in the developing world to ensure that the accumulating body of experience and documentation on IK systems is incorporated into textbooks of non-formal and formal systems of education. The latter should cover all levels from primary up to post-graduate and include professional schools (e.g. medicine and agriculture).
   • Family, extended family and community-based control of, and involvement in, the development and provision of early childhood education programmes should be integrated into primary and elementary education policies worldwide.
   • The official criteria of policies for development lending should be modified insofar as they specifically discriminate against IK, technologies and practices, e.g. in fields such as agriculture.
   • The internationally mandated philosophy and practice of participatory and democratic development should be broadened to include unbiased recognition of the importance of local knowledge systems to ensure sustainable forms of development.
   • In full consultation with widely representative indigenous people's organizations, appropriate national and international procedural and legal conventions should be definitively established and strictly enforced to ensure that ownership rights are honoured and equitable compensation is provided for local knowledge, products and resources.
3. Recommendations consonant with the spirit and the expressed intent of the 1993 International Year of Partnership with the World's Indigenous Peoples, as affirmed by the United Nations' General Assembly as well as the UNCED Agenda 21 recommendations.
   • OECD Honour agencies and recipient governments in the developing world should establish internal Indigenous Knowledge Task Force groups for working out appropriate policy and for programming directions on employing IK in development. Such task force groups should ensure the participation and input of key indigenous organizations. Furthermore, these groups should recommend specific policies on cultural sustainability which recognize and build upon the rich knowledge base held by indigenous peoples. Such policies should link IK with cultural sustainability measures for the conservation of biological diversity. Furthermore, such policies should address the actions and interactions of the public, private and voluntary sectors.
   • Policy recommendations by task force groups should address the following issues:
     1. Ensure that more adequate and equitable resources are directed by donor agencies in concert with recipient governments in the developing world to ensure the involvement of indigenous organizations (at various levels) in the direct planning, implementation and evaluation of programming initiatives. These initiatives should logically employ indigenous peoples in formulating development goals based on their own knowledge and practice systems.
     2. IK for Development Research Funds should be established to ensure accelerated and expanded participatory research of IK systems and practice. The optimal location and administration of such funds would vary with the circumstances peculiar to each country.
     3. This initiative should also include provision for the strengthening of existing national IK centres, or the rapid establishment of new ones. Such centres should be designed to ensure immediate and continuing control by, and/or involvement of, POs, particularly in the determination of IK centre policies, projects and programming priorities.

Action Plan for the Global IK Network

At the time the symposium was held, there were five national centres: Ghana Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (GHARCIK), Indonesian Resource Center for Indigenous Knowledge (INRIK), Kenyan Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (KENRIK), Philippine Resource Center for Sustainable Development and Indigenous Knowledge (PHIRCSDIK) and Mexican Resource Center for Indigenous Knowledge (RIDSCA). At regional level two centres have been established: African Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (ARCIK) and Regional Program for the Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge in Asia (REPPIKA). There are three global centres: Centre for International Research and Advisory Networks (CIRAN), the Netherlands; Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development (CIKARD), USA; and Leiden Ethnosystems and Development Programme (LEAD), the Netherlands.

Finally, there were three collaborating centres: Information Centre for Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture (ILEIA), the Netherlands; Honey Bee, India; and International Program on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Canada. Collaboration with the International Society of Ethnobiology is recommended.

For addresses of the centres, see Addresses IK Resource centres.

Recommended Network Activities

1. National level
   • Develop code of ethics.
   • Set up research agenda.
   • Organize task force for fund-raising and proposal writing.
   • Provide material for the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, an international networking newsletter to be published by CIRAN.
   • Network across sectors, with GOs, NGOs, POs, and donors (researchers, facilitators and producers of IK).
   • Identify sectorial coordinators for agriculture, natural resource management, (soil/water/forest/wildlife), animal health, human health, education, local organizations, and non- agricultural technologies.
   • Establish inter-sectorial advisory committees.
   • Coordinate at national level activities generated out of global centers.
   • Establish documentation units for:
     1. Published and unpublished documents
     2. Newly recorded IK systems
     3. Existing databases
   • Conduct training workshops on IK for members of the advisory committee and sectorial coordinators.
   • Organize pre-service and in-service training for extension agents.
   • Organize national workshops on IK and sustainable development aimed at decision-makers from people's organizations, government agencies, private voluntary organizations, donors, and the private sector.
   • Develop guidelines for policy makers, and lobby on behalf of IK among policy-makers.
   • Develop public relations materials, such as newsletters and popular accounts for newspapers.
   • Analyze national educational policies in order to introduce IK curricular materials into formal education institutions.
   • Work out guidelines for the compensation of local peoples for sharing their knowledge.
   • Promote the full participation of indigenous peoples in the design, implementation and evaluation of development projects that concern IK, and organize meetings with indigenous peoples of other countries to exchange experiences.
2. Regional level
   • Establish connection to the mass media.
   • Develop briefing kits.
   • Conduct national public relations workshops.
   • Organize conferences, symposia and workshops.
   • Establish national courses on IK and sustainable development.
   • Produce regional newsletters.
   • Help build up national IK libraries in connection with CIRAN.
3. Global level
   • CIRAN
     1. Publish Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor.
     2. Compile and distribute global directory.
     3. Organize task force to set up databases.
     4. Set up E-mail (inventory and pilot project for established centres).
     5. Organize global IK conference.
     6. Identify funding for distributing materials to IK centres.
     7. Design Global Network logo & brochure.
     8. Establish mechanisms for communication among centres.
   • CIKARD
     1. Develop guidelines on how to establish national IK centres.
     2. Coordinate activities leading to production of manuals for IK research and training.
     3. House the global documentation unit.
     4. Prepare public relations and training materials.
     5. Conduct global literature searches and compile annotated bibliographies.
     6. Compile list of documents held at CIKARD and make it available to national centres; this list should also specify the address of origin for each document.
     7. Establish guidelines for documentation units.
     8. Compile fund-raising guide for national centres.
     9. Conduct joint ventures--e.g. link the network with other organizations such as the United Nations.
   • LEAD
     1. Support publication of bibliographies, monographs, and books.
     2. Host ERASMUS (EC) programmes for exchange of scholars.
     3. Organize conferences, seminars, and workshops.
     4. Conduct joint ventures.