Indigenous Knowledge and Development
Monitor, December 1998 Indigenous Knowledge and Development
Monitor, December 1998
Contents IK Monitor 6(3) | IKDM Homepage | Suggestions to: ikdm@nuffic.nl | (c) copyright Nuffic-CIRAN and contributors 1999.
Rural livelihoods, empowerment and the environment - Going beyond the farm boundary
Pretoria (South Africa) 29 November - 4 December 1998 This 15th biennial conference of the
global Association for Farming Systems Research-Extension (AFSR-E) is the first to be held
in Africa. It is hosted by the Southern African Association for Farming Systems
Research-Extension (SAAFSR-E). Some 700 scientists and practitioners from over 60
countries throughout the world have expressed interest in attending, making it an event no
person interested in rural development should miss. (See also IKDM 5(3)) The
theme has been divided into five sub-themes: n ecologically sustainable development and
farming systems; n short-term farmer survival vs. long term sustainability; n empowerment
through capacity-building; n the institutional environment and farming systems; n
methodological issues and challenges.
For more information, please contact: Richard Fowler, East Coast Co-ordinator, Farming Systems Research & Technology Transfer, Grain Crops Institute: Agricultural Research Council, P/bag X 9059, Pietermaritzburg 3200, South Africa. Tel.: +27-331-355 9410 or: 355 9409. Fax: +27-331-355 9518. E-mail: rfowler@cedara1.agric.za
On 3 December 1998, concurrent with the conference, there will be a joint session of the AFSR-E and the Research Group on Agroforestry of the International Union of Forestry Research Organisations (IUFRO). The theme for the joint meeting is 'Process-based research in sustainable agricultural development: integrating social, economic and ecological perspectives'. The reason for the joint meeting is that while the study of agroforestry requires an interdisciplinary, systems-based approach, agroforestry networks and meetings tend to stem from either a particular forest or a particular agricultural tradition. The AFSR-E represents a network which effectively brings together specialists in the natural, economic and social sciences who share an interest in agricultural development. The IUFRO agroforestry group represents an effective network of people, mainly with a background in forestry, whose chief concern is the role of trees in agricultural systems. A joint meeting should therefore bring together a most useful combination of perspectives. For more information, please contact: Dr Fergus L. Sinclair, School of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2UW, UK. Tel.: +44-1248-382 459. Fax: +44-1248-382 832. E-mail: f.l.sinclair@bangor.ac.uk
Integrated approach for animal health care
Calicut (India) 4-6 February 1999 This
seminar is being organized by the Malabar Regional Co-operative Milk Producers'
Union, a farmers' co-operative aimed at improving the socio-economic circumstances of
milk producers in the region by facilitating the joint production, procurement, processing
and marketing of milk and milk products.
Most milk producers in this region are marginal
farmers who spend a large share of their income on healthcare for their cattle. Some of
the farmers specialize in Ayurveda, the Indian indigenous system of medicine. They treat
animals using these traditional methods. But the government veterinary services prefer
allopathic methods for treating animals. The veterinarians working in these services never
promote traditional methods, sheerly out of ignorance. 'I will teach what I was
taught,' is their attitude. Yet non-allopathic medical systems such as Ayurveda,
homeopathy, and naturopathy are well known and widely used for the treatment of humans.
The idea of the seminar is to bring together experts in the various medical systems in
order to help them to understand and appreciate medical systems other than their own. This
could lead to possible areas for the integrated management of animal health.
Traditional
treatment methods are accessible, cheap, environmentally friendly, effective and
sustainable. But they do not have answers for all problems. What is required is a holistic
'techno-blend' of different medical systems—a blend which is
environmentally friendly, effective and sustainable, also from the farmers' point of
view.
The seminar participants will be mainly veterinarians employed by the Animal
Husbandry Department. The workshop is aimed at sensitizing these professionals to the
value of traditional methods.
Key speakers include representatives from the Centre for
Tropical Veterinary Medicine, Edinburgh (Scotland) and the following Indian institutions:
Bharat Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF), Ahmedabad; Kotakkal Aryavaidyasala, Kerala;
Ayurveda College; Homeo College; Honey Bee Magazine; Animals Training Health and Resarch
(ANTHRA), Secunderabad; College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences; and the Department of
Animal Husbandry.
Anyone interested in taking part is requested to submit a paper of no
more than 2000 words before 15 January 1999. Authors of accepted papers will be given 20
minutes to present them. Accommodation can be arranged on request.
For further
information, please contact: Mr V. Padmakumar, Assistant Manager, or Dr R.S. Hegde,
Assistant Manager, Malabar Regional Co-op Milk Producers' Union, Kunnamangalam P.O.,
Calicut - 673 571, Kerala, India. Tel.: +91-495-200 612. Fax: +91-495-200 652. E-mail: SLO@giasbg01.vsnl.net.in
Criteria and indicators of sustainability in rural development: A natural-resource
perspective
Ahmedabad (India) 11-13 March 1999 This training workshop will be conducted by
the Centre for Management in Agriculture, Ahmedabad (India), in collaboration with UNESCO.
Rural development strategies based on the exploitation of natural resources must meet
certain criteria if the natural resources are to be sustained. Identifying these criteria
has become a central issue for strategy designers. The problem is that the various
stakeholders in rural development programmes define the criteria differently. And even if
they can agree on criteria for sustainability, their views regarding indicators of
sustainability are bound to differ.
The conventional literature on participatory
approaches to resource management and rural development stresses the need to draw local
populations into the plans and programmes designed by outsiders. One seldom reads about
the reverse—about how the outsiders should be drawn into the aims of local
populations, which are based on perspectives which those populations developed through
their own historical processes.
The challenge therefore is to teach development planners:
(a) to identify key criteria and indicators of sustainability from socio-economic,
environmental and gender perspectives; (b) to identify the differences between the various
stakeholders' points of view; (c ) to provide a forum where the various points of
view can be expressed, where negotiation can take place, and where creative new models can
be generated; and (d) to empower local communities and creative individuals so that they
can monitor and gain control over external interventions, and ensure that these do not
conflict with their own local ecological ethics, values and community spirit.
The training
workshop will include presentations, group discussion, role play, field visits and
informal dialogue. Emphasis will be on 'lateral learning'. Participants will be
encouraged to display materials through which they can share their own insights.
Invitations will be sent to 30 participants from 11 countries of South and Central Asia:
development managers, representatives of NGOs and local communities, policy-makers, and
scholars. Approximately two-thirds of these participants, whose costs will be covered by
UNESCO, will be from India. The remaining third will be from Afghanistan, Bangladesh,
Bhutan, Iran, Myanmar, Mongolia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Another ten
participants will be invited to take part without UNESCO sponsorship.
Each participant
will bring information about the criteria and indicators being used in rural development
programmes in his or her own country or region. During the workshop these will be compared
and discussed, and the participants will try to arrive at a set of criteria and indicators
which work well for the monitoring and redesign of rural development programmes, and which
guarantee that the development process is on a sustainable path.
For more information,
please contact: Professor Anil K. Gupta, Centre for Management in Agriculture, Indian
Institute of Management, Ahmedabad - 380 015, India. Fax : +91-79-6427 896. E-mail : anilg@iimahd.ernet.in http://WWW.iimahd.ernet.in/-anilg/unesco
Working Group on Indigenous Populations 16th session and informal meetings
Geneva
(Switzerland) 27-31 July 1998 The 16th session of the Working Group on Indigenous
Populations of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was devoted, as usual, mainly
to hearing reports by indigenous peoples on developments pertaining to the promotion and
protection of human rights and the fundamental freedoms of indigenous populations. The
other major item on the agenda of this annual event is the theme, which this year was
'Education and language'. The proceedings of the session become an official UN
document which is published in the six official UN languages (English, French, Spanish,
Chinese, Arabic, and Russian).
Prior to and during the annual session, participants may
organize informal meetings around any theme they think is relevant. This year, informal
meetings offered presentations on a wide variety of subjects, including world indigenous
sports, a briefing on World Bank policy on indigenous peoples, a meeting entitled
'Indigenous peoples, biodiversity and tourism', and a slide presentation on the
first indigenous African women's conference.
Luisa Maffi (Terralingua, USA) had
requested an informal meeting to discuss 'Indigenous peoples and language: integrated
perspectives on linguistic, cultural and biological diversity'. She had also made a
short statement on the topic during the plenary session on the principal theme. Ms Maffi
cited recent evidence that international bodies concerned with protecting biological
diversity and intellectual property rights are increasingly recognizing indigenous
languages as carriers of indigenous knowledge and innovation. As such, they should also be
protected.
The Society for Threatened Peoples, in cooperation with the Netherlands Centre
for Indigenous Peoples, conducted a workshop during the conference. The two organizations
belong to the European Alliance with Indigenous Peoples, a group of NGOs dealing with
human rights and indigenous peoples which lobbies at the European level. During the
workshop, Mr Thedodor Rathgeber (a German member of the Society) monitored a discussion
about standards which the European Union should define and observe in its relations with
indigenous peoples.
On the fourth day of the session, the World Health Organization (WHO)
held an informal forum under the title 'Indigenous peoples and health'. Dr Ted
Webster (coordinator of the UN Decade of Indigenous Peoples, and WHO's contact person
for matters concerning indigenous health) described the director-general's report and
the 51st World Health Assembly resolution as evidence of WHO's continuing commitment
to the issue. He expressed appreciation for the opportunity that WHO has been offered in
the Committee on Indigenous Health. WHO is looking forward to an international meeting in
Geneva sometime in early 1999 at which indigenous peoples and other experts will be
represented. Dr Gerard Bodeker from the Global Initiative for Traditional Systems of
Health (England) spoke at the same meeting. He said he had noticed two distinct points of
view at the conference: a conventional approach to such issues as epidemiology and
healthcare services, and an approach featuring indigenous peoples' relationship to
land, spiritual healing, and nature. There is no bridge between these perspectives, he
remarked, and it will be a formidable challenge to incorporate indigenous perspectives and
knowledge systems into public policy.
The 17th session of the WGIP will perhaps be held in
Paris, where it will be hosted by UNESCO in conjunction with a UNESCO-sponsored
international conference on indigenous peoples' cultural rights.
For more
information, please contact: Secretariat of the UN Working Group for Indigenous
Populations, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland. Tel.: +41-22-917 3413.
Fax: +41-22-917 0212.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Programme
Mafiking (South Africa) 21-23 September 1998
This national workshop constituted the public launch of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Programme. Phase one of the programme, a national pilot project involving nine
historically disadvantaged universities, was completed in June 1998. The national workshop
was phase two. As a forum for consultation, it has given substance to future directions.
There were 200 participants, representing the various stakeholders in South Africa
(indigenous practitioners, government, universities (including students), technikons,
science councils, NGOs and the private sector) plus representatives from the World
Intellectual Property Organisation, Harvard University, and the Smithsonian Institute.
The
workshop topics included the following:
Dr M.W. Serote, Chairperson of the Steering Committee of the Indigenous Knowledge
Systems Programme, delivered the keynote address, entitled: 'The intersection of
indigenous knowledge and the national innovation system'. (See also the guest column, in which Dr Serote tells more about South Africa's IKS programme.)
All
forms of local knowledge are embedded in broad knowledge-systems that incorporate the
ethical, social, religious and philosophical systems of local peoples. There is a
necessary connection between the notion of the African Renaissance and the revitalization
of IKS. As Deputy-President Mbeki has stated, "The generation of new knowledge"
needs to be preceded by an opening of the "African door to the world of knowledge, to
elevate Africa's place within the universe of research, the formation of new
knowledge, education and information."
During the workshop, participants outlined the
'vision', 'mission', and 'values' that will underlie the
programme. The mission is to achieve cooperation among many parties: South Africa's
indigenous communities and their representatives, historically disadvantaged and other
institutions of higher learning, science councils, relevant structures of government,
corporate entities in the private and public sectors and other interested or relevant
parties. The aims and objectives of the programme include: to empower practitioners of
indigenous knowledge to work together with their counterparts in Western science and
technology, so that each can help the other. All contributions will be duly acknowledged,
accredited and protected--whatever their origin--and rewards will be equitably shared. One
of the key principles is that the proper recognition of the rights to ownership of IKS
will require some modification of currently accepted academic norms. This issue must
therefore taken into account as research methods are determined and research results are
disseminated.
For more information on the outcomes of the workshop, please contact: Dr
Lynda Gilfillan, Programme Manager, Indigenous Knowledge Systems Programme, Parliament,
P.O. Box 15, Cape Town 8000, South Africa. Tel.: +23-21-403 3253. Fax: +23-21-403 2073.
The role of the media in Africa
Leiden (the Netherlands) 8 October 1998 This seminar,
attended by some 30 participants, was organized by the Africa Studies Centre (ASC) and
chaired by Dr Stephen Ellis, chairman of ASC's research group 'Conflict,
conciliation and control'. The first presentation was held (in French) by visiting
Africa Studies Centre fellow Dr Solofo Randrianja from l'Université de Tamatave
(Madagascar). Dr Randrianja compared the way in which two popular Madagascar weeklies
appealed to specific ethnic groups in their representation of recent Madagascar history.
According to the speaker, ethnonationalism is born out of a lingering
resentment—"l'histoire ressentiment" as he put it—which presents
one party as victims and the other as their oppressors. It is then all too easy to
mobilize people on the basis of their feelings towards the victims rather than reasonable
arguments. This ethnonationalism, developed in the wake of nationalism, is certainly not
unique to the Madagascar context. Dr Randriana also pointed to Natal, where the colonial
period led to the Inkhata, which developed into the Inkhata Freedom Party, both of which
were built around a reconstructed Zulu identity.
ASC staff member and free-lance
journalist Dr Ineke van Kessel analyzed the mass media in South Africa 'from
liberation to black empowerment'. She concluded that from 1990 onwards the process of
transition in South Africa has had a negative impact on the printed media, in terms of
ownership, number of titles, and content. The effect on broadcasting, on the other hand,
was highly positive. There was a sudden proliferation of broadcasting licences, and the
earlier monopoly of SNBC was lost in the process. Community radio, a new sector, is
proving well suited to serve all kinds of interest groups, serving as a channel of
communication between government and the people.
Dr Marcel Rutten (ASC) talked about the
media in multiparty Kenya, focusing on ownership, policies and the role of the media in
the process of building a democracy, in particular during the last general elections in
December 1997.
The contribution of visiting ASC research fellow Dr Francis B. Nyamnjoh of
Cameroon dealt with media pluralism and civil society in emerging African democracies. On
the basis of the Cameroonian experience, Dr Nyamnjoh argued that the media "should
unfetter themselves from the fascinating delusion that they are on the side of those who
are struggling against an authoritarian regime. Simply being a neutral mediator is safest
for the media and for civil society", he concluded.
For more information, please
contact: Dr Piet Konings, Head ASC Research group 'Conflict, conciliation and
control', African Studies Centre, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the Netherlands.
Tel.: +31-71-527 3367. Fax: +31-71-527 3344. E-mail: KONINGS@rulfsw.LeidenUniv.nl http://www.fsw.leidenuniv.nl/www/w3_asc/welcome.htm
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