coming:
Systems-oriented Research in Agriculture and Rural
Development
Montpellier (France), 21-25 November, 1994.
Organized at the initiative of the 'Amsterdam Group',
comprising representatives of some 20 European organizations
and universities involved in development. The planned
symposium will consist of seven workshops. One of these will
focus on the role of indigenous knowledge in systems
approaches to agricultural innovation. Another will focus on
how local organizations influence innovation in a systems
context.
For further information, please contact:
Secretariat, International Symposium Systems-Oriented Research
and Rural Development, BP 5035, 34032 Montpellier, France.
Tel: +33-67-61785. Fax: +33-67-617186.
National Symposium
on Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Development
Colombo (Sri Lanka).
This symposium has been postponed to March 1994. For more
information, please contact:
Prof. R. Ulluwishewa, SLARCIK, University of Sri
Jayewardenapura, Forestry Unit, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka. Tel: +94-
1-851685. Fax: +94-1-437879.
past:
Common Property Resources and the Crisis of
Pastoralism in the Thar Desert
Jodhpur (India), 16-18 March, 1993.
This workshop was co-organized by the School of Desert
Sciences (Jodhpur) and several other local other institutions,
as well as by the League for Pastoral Peoples, Germany.
Sponsored by NORAD, the Swiss Development Corporation, the
Ford Foundation and Misereor, it brought together over 120
participants, representing traditional pastoralists, NGOs,
government institutions and scientists. Discussion focussed on
the problems faced by Rajasthan's pastoralists in the face of
a rapid decrease in communally owned grazing grounds and the
intensification of agriculture. The conference aim of
providing pastoralists with a forum for voicing their
grievances was certainly achieved, but little agreement was
reached on how the situation of landless livestock herders
could be improved. The organizers hope that this conference
was a first step towards more productive interaction and an
increased exchange of views between the various groups
concerned with the maintenance of common pastureland and the
continued viability of pastoralism as an economic strategy.
Publication of the proceedings is planned. (Dr. I.
Köhler-Rollefson)
Contact: Dr. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, League for
Pastoral Peoples, Pragelatostrasse 20, 6105 Ober-Ramstadt,
Germany.
Pithecanthropus Centennial 1893-1993: Human Evolution
in its Ecological Context
Leiden (The Netherlands), 26 June-1 July, 1993.
This international conference was held in Leiden under the
auspices of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences. Session C--Cultural Anthropology: Knowledge,
Adaptation and Development--was chaired by Dr. D.M. Warren and
co-chaired by Dr. L.J. Slikkerveer. The 22 papers presented by
persons from twelve countries focussed on various indigenous
knowledge topics, including indigenous resource management,
agriculture, animal science, botany, health, aquatic resources
and the role of indigenous knowledge as it relates to gender
issues and extension. Representatives of CIKARD, LEAD, CIRAN,
INRIK, SLARCIK, KENRIK and PHIRCSDIK were among the
participants in this session. The papers will be edited and
published in a single volume, one of three 'Evaluative
Proceedings'. Information on this volume can be obtained
from:
Dr. L.J. Slikkerveer, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2300 RB Leiden, The
Netherlands.
World Bank Conference on
Traditional Knowledge and Sustainable Development
Washington (USA), 27-28 September, 1993.
As part of its contribution to the International Year of the
World's Indigenous People, the World Bank hosted a two-day
conference on the subject of Traditional Knowledge and
Sustainable Development. Participants included Bank staff
members, representatives of NGOs and other UN agencies, and
more than a dozen indigenous people, many of whom are involved
in natural resource management, biodiversity conservation, and
other indigenous development projects in their home countries
and communities.
The conference was opened by the Director of the Environment
Department, Mohamed T. El-Ashry, and included discussions
of:
Fourth Annual Common
Property Conference: Common Property in Ecosystems under
Stress
Manila (The Philippines), 16-19 June, 1993
The conference was conducted by the International Association
for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) and organized by the
Institute of Environmental Science and Management, University
of The Philippines at Los Banos. Some 300 scientists and
development practitioners from all over the globe
participated. More than 100 papers were presented in some 30
concurrent sessions, and there were panel discussions and
plenary sessions. The bulk of the sessions focussed on (1)
management of common property and (2) policy issues, legal
aspects, conflicts and related issues. Only a few sessions
dealt with the economics or socio-economics of common
property. Some 10 sessions were related to fisheries. Most of
the others were related to forest and environment. Several
papers described the role of IK in common property management.
A topic in many of the discussions was indicating the growing
recognition of IK's importance for development. (Dr. E.
Mathias-Mundy)
Contact: Dr. Ben Malayang III, Institute of
Environmental Science and Management (IESAM), University of
the Philippines at Los Banos, College, Laguna 4031, The
Philippines.
Community Management
and Common Property of Coastal Fisheries and Upland Resources
in Asia and the Pacific: Concepts, Methods and
Experiences
International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, Silang,
Cavite (The Philippines), 21-23 June, 1993.
The workshop was sponsored by the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC), the Ford Foundation and the
International Centre for Living Aquatic Resources Management
(ICLARM). The workshop had some 70 participants. After one day
of plenary lectures, the workshop separated into two groups:
(1) The fisheries group discussed concepts and methods for
community management of coastal fisheries. (2) The uplands
group developed recommendations for research that can
contribute to strengthening local institutions' capacity for
action. Reppika participated in the uplands group and in a
poster session with a poster on IK and common property.
(Dr. E. Mathias-Mundy)
Contact: Robert S. Pomeroy, ICLARM, MC P.O. Box 1501,
Makati, Metro Manila 1299, The Philippines.
First Philippines PRA
Practitioners Meeting
Occupational Safety and Health Center, Manila (The
Philippines), 20 July, 1993.
The meeting was sponsored by the Swiss development
organization HELVETAS. About 30 participants from various non-
government and other organizations shared and discussed their
experiences with Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in The
Philippines. The experiences showed that PRA methods are
useful tools for recording IK. (Dr. E. Mathias-
Mundy)
Contact: Scott A. Killough, IIRR, Silang, Cavite
4118, The Phillipines.
The 20th Waigani
Seminar
Papua New Guinea, 20-27 August, 1993.
The Waigani Seminar is a biannual international conference
organized by various departments of the University of Papua
New Guinea. The focus varies from seminar to seminar; previous
topics included health, economics and education. The topic of
this seminar was 'Environment and Development: From Rio to
Rai'. As one of the first developing countries Papua New
Guinea is implementing Agenda 21 by developing a National
Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS).
The seminar was opened by His Excellency Sir Wiwa Korowi,
Governor General of Papua New Guinea. The approximately 300
participants from Papua New Guinea and abroad included the
Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States, who had
been in Rio and was one of the driving forces behind the
seminar. Other seminar participants included government
representatives, scientists, representatives of NGOs,
landowners and villagers. (According to participants, 90% of
the land in Papua New Guinea is owned by clans: that is, by
the people.) U.S. vice-president Al Gore sent a video-taped
message to be shown at the seminar.
Presentations covered various topics within the following sub-
themes: revitalizing growth with sustainability, sustainable
living, human settlements, efficient resource use, global and
regional resources, managing chemicals and waste, people
participation and responsibility, and capacity-building as an
essential means. The last sub-theme addressed the issue of
traditional knowledge and technologies as a vehicle for
education and training. Participants drafted recommendations
on each sub-theme to serve as input for the NSDS. (Dr. E.
Mathias-Mundy)
Contact: Dr. David Mowbray, Environmental Science,
The University of Papua New Guinea, Box 320, University P.O.,
Papua New Guinea. Fax: +67-5-267187.
Fifth International Permaculture
Conference
Copenhagen (Denmark), 25-29 August, 1993.
Attended by some 250 people from all parts of the world, this
conference was the final part of a five-week operation that
started with a Permaculture Design Course in the south of
Norway, and also included a week of excursions in the area,
the Permaculture Designers' Convergence in Sweden, and a bus
tour to places of interest on the way to Copenhagen.
Permaculture is an all-encompassing concept for the design and
maintenance of sustainable systems. It developed from the
fields of land-use and agriculture to include architecture and
town planning as well as the conscious development of
economic, social and information systems. Drawing on
fundamental ecological principles and making use of indigenous
and traditional knowledge as well as modern scientific
insights, the universal concept is gaining ground quickly. It
is being enriched and applied in situations as diverse as the
Kalahari desert and New York City.
The bi-annual global conferences are important opportunities
for meeting and exchanging ideas with other practitioners, who
come from equally diverse backgrounds. Together they represent
a reform movement which started at the grass-roots level but
is becoming increasingly professionalized, with people from
academic and policy-making circles starting to get involved.
In general, the permaculture concept of sustainable design
provides a framework for the organization of all relevant
knowledge aimed at transformation of existing world systems,
while the permacultural practice represents a resource for and
an invitation to scientific research. The linking of
grass-roots projects to research institutions is of great
importance, but so far depends mostly on the initiatives of
generally overloaded and burnout-prone individuals.
The range of subjects dealt with at the conference is
indicated by a sample of the workshop topics: no-till
agriculture, integrated resource development, Andean farming,
urban gardening, biological waste treatment, eco-villages,
bioregional organization, grass-roots banking and community
development. Thanks to focussed funding, there was notable
participation and input from people from the South. Some of
the most interesting projects that were presented came from
China and Vietnam (upgrading traditional aquaculture), The
Philippines (self-reliance based on community skills), Ecuador
and Colombia (rainforest management with indigenous
inhabitants), India (Self-Employed Women's Association) and
Zimbabwe (self-education in a natural farming network).
At the same time, the growing concern about widespread
community erosion in more affluent societies provides
motivation for developing healthy and livable urban areas.
Moreover, it encourages western groups to look at their
cultural crisis, and to revalue community traditions such as
are indigenous to Europe.
The conference proceedings are being prepared. (Fransje de
Waard)
More information can be obtained from:
Permakultur i Danmark, Baggesensgade 6, DK 2200 Copenhagen,
Danmark. Tel/fax: +45-35-372539.
Indigenous Food Plants
Workshop
National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi (Kenya), 14-16 April,
1993.
The Indigenous Food Plants Programme held a three-day workshop
in April. It was attended by more than 90 people from some 35
institutions. Participants represented national research
institutes, universities, colleges, non-government
organizations, government ministries and farmers. One of the
purposes of the workshop was to bring together individuals and
institutions in the field of indigenous food plants (IFPs) in
order to:
Maasai
Friends of Conservation, Kenya, 17-19 March 1993
This three-day seminar was conducted in Maasai communities in
Narok district by the Friends of Conservation, a
community-development-based non-government organization. The
NGO is concerned about the loss of traditional knowledge
relevant for the management of wild resources and sees village
elders as the appropriate people to pass this knowledge on to
children in local primary schools. In the seminar Maasai
elders were the resource people, and primary school teachers
were the participants and pupils. The elders gave talks on
traditional methods for conserving the environment of
wildlife; they told of each age-group's particular
responsibility in this important work.
The schools in the Maasai Mara area where the project is being
conducted resolved to tap the knowledge of the village elders
regularly. They will first identify knowledgeable elders
living near the school. Once a week the elders will be invited
to come and tell stories about conservation, the environment
and plant uses. At certain times the children will be taken
out into the field for practical lessons.
Participants in the seminar were shocked to hear what the
elders had to say about traditional methods for preventing
anthrax in humans. Anthrax is a deadly disease affecting
livestock, wild game and humans. For millennia the Maasai have
lived with it. They developed ways of preventing it which may
seem crude, but probably made the difference between life and
death.
'When the woman was seven or eight months pregnant, she began
to starve, surviving on water and little or no food,' said one
elder of about 70. 'An animal that had died or was suffering
from anthrax was sought so that its most infected body parts,
the liver and spleen, could be cut out', he went on. 'These
were roasted and given to the women to eat. She chewed young
shoots of olmisigiyoi (Rhus natalensis) and swallowed
the juice as she ate the infected meat. The Maasai believed
that the diseased food would harden the foetus, who would then
be born with the strength to resist anthrax and related
diseases.'
Though no scientific explanation is yet available it is easy
to deduce that the meat exposes the foetus to anthrax,
stimulating it to develop immunity to the disease. The mother
was unaffected probably because she too was 'immunized' at the
same early stage.
This practice is now dead. Though it was a risky and
hair-raising undertaking, there is still a need to pass this
knowledge to the younger generation, who, besides preserving
the knowledge for its own sake, may seek a scientific
explanation.
Contact: Friends of Conservation, P.O. Box 74901,
Nairobi, Kenya.
Intellectual Property Rights and Indigenous
Knowledge
Granlibakken, Lake Tahoe, California (usa), 5-10 October,
1993.
Current conceptions of intellectual property were first
developed in Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries. The
world now recognizes four main types: patents, trade marks,
copyright and trade secrets. Focussing mainly on local
knowledge of plants (the use of both wild and cultivated
species for medicinal and agricultural purposes), the
Granlibakken conference, convened by Stephen Brush, considered
whether current conceptions of property rights in the western
world are adequate to protect the interests of rural
communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Answers to this
question among the thirty or so participants tended to vary
systematically according to region and topical focus.
Americanists concerned primarily with minority groups and
medicinal plants tended to favour extending established
Western intellectual property rights to cover the indigenous
knowledge possessed by small and threatened groups of Native
Americans. African and Asian voices, and those concerned
primarily with crop germplasm resources, seemed more concerned
with securing þfair tradeþ in knowledge exchange than with
privatization of local knowledge as such. Compared with, say,
the ethnobotany of 8000 Kayapo Indians, can the collective
agricultural experience of many hundreds of millions of South
Asian peasant farmers be considered in any way þlocalþ, or a
minority preserve? In this second case, a private knowledge
regime may have the adverse effect of blocking mutually
beneficial two-way flows (Indian germplasm for European or
North American biotechnology, for example). Representatives of
private companies at the conference seemed keenest to ally
themselves with the minority rights activists, perhaps on the
grounds that this gave them a niche for resource exploitation
safely hidden from the attention of commercial rivals (and an
ethical image useful in advertisements). Representatives of
the public-sector genetic resource management community were
understandably concerned to bring out the limitations of
existing conceptions of private intellectual property when
applied to crop genetic resources that are the complex outcome
of many generations of farmer selection.
Privatizing a land race may be as inappropriate as attempts to
privatize language--another product of inter-generational
community intellectual effort. What is needed in such
circumstances is public investment in the intellectual process
that sustains the resource (much as the French invest heavily
in sustaining land promoting their language and culture). It
became clear as a result of the conference discussions that no
single solution is appropriate to all community circumstances
and kinds of indigenous knowledge, but that (as ever) it is
difficult to sort out intellectual and technical
considerations from political preferences (even if this now
involves some new and unanticipated alliances between radical
ngos and private multi-national capital).
Edited versions of the papers, and of the discussions of the
conference working groups on indigenous knowledge and the
biodiversity convention, the applicability of patents and
other forms of contract agreements, and non-property
approaches to indigenous knowledge, will appear in a volume to
be edited by Stephen Brush. (Paul Richards)
Contact: Dr. Stephen Brush, Department of Applied
Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis,
California 95616, USA. Fax: +1-675-25660