Statement by
Ms. Elizabeth Dowdeswell
UN Under-Secretary-General
of the
United Nations Environment Programme
and
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements
to the
InterAmerican Indigenous People's Conference
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
18 September 1993
Tonight I feel as if I am in some small measure repaying a
debt. From an Innuit colleague I took a phrase which has been
my guiding principle since taking on this job. He told me that
he wanted to "cause constructive damage to the status quo". And
in my four year term at UNEP and HABITAT I too want to cause
"constructive damage to the status quo" - because the status quo
is not good enough. Our environment continues to be damaged, our
human settlements inadequate and our practices generally
unsustainable.
And I am sure that is what you have been talking about these
past few days.
I think if I had to give a title to my remarks this evening,
I would call it "WALKING IN TWO WORLDS".
For many indigenous peoples, certain places, plants or
animals have special religious or cultural significance. Often,
these places or things possess something of what anthropologists
call the "liminal"; that is, they somehow span the gap between
ordinary and extraordinary reality.
Sacred places used for initiation and other rites of passage
often possess this quality; mountaintops lay "between earth and
sky," for example, and caves are the gateways to underground
realms.
Even in western civilization, the power of sacred animals
in mythology and folklore is directly related to their ability
to live in two worlds, to straddle one or more ecological niches.
Frogs and turtles, which divide their time between land and
water, are venerated in many parts of the world for this ability.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I think the indigenous peoples of this world, too, partake
of this power to walk at once in two worlds.
They are our sole remaining gateway to the aboriginal
knowledge of the land, they are the ancient keepers of the wisdom
of nature. They walk the boundaries of this earth between the
developed world and the natural ecosystem. They bring to us
valuable knowledge of medicine, of agriculture, of wildlife and
of economics; they bring us the critical knowledge of sustainable
living.
A Kayapo (Brazil) Indian leader explains: "I am trying to
save the knowledge that the forests and this planet are alive,
to give it back to you who have lost the understanding."
The tremendous storehouse of information contained in the
lore and working knowledge of indigenous peoples is not news to
many of you here, but I am fascinated in the face of what some
call aboriginal technology.
In the Colombian Amazon alone, Amazonian Indians employ more
than 75 species of plants, in many genera and families, for the
production of curares [kyu-rah'-rayz] for poison arrows. They
often use complex mixtures of different kinds of curares;
different formulae based on the kind, size, and habits of the
animals they are hunting. An arrow poison may contain as many
as 15 ingredients; we are still discovering curare plants that
have never been reported.
Moreover, Northwest Amazon indigenous peoples have even
learned that chemical compounds in some plants interact
synergistically with chemical compounds in others. While modern
medicine has not yet found a use for these several alkaloids, we
still may marvel at the technology of the Indians who, in a
massive vegetation of 80,000 species, could ... learn the effects
of these invisible chemical substances.
It goes without saying, I suppose, that a team of
biochemists with the most sophisticated equipment and scientific
technology would find it a lifetime's task to randomly test
80,000 species for active biological properties, much less
discover their synergistic effects.
Reliance on indigenous peoples' knowledge of this "green
pharmacy" has yielded vincristine and taxol, powerful anticancer
drugs, from Madagascar and the American northwest, respectively.
A North American wildflower, once derisively called Indian
tobacco, is the source of the commercial smoking deterrent,
lobeline.
Stories like this have become the stock and trade of
biochemists, often in the employ of major pharmaceutical
companies, to justify expeditions to the lands of indigenous
peoples. Their aim usually is to learn as much as they can about
the plants from the natives of that place, collect specimens to
test back home, and arrange a way to harvest useful plants from
the wild.
In other words, to exploit the resource.
And this resource -- both the knowledge and the environment
-- is an endangered one. In the vast majority of instances,
aboriginal technology is passed down in oral form.
Westernization and acculturation diminish the interest of young
people in learning their language and culture. Linguists
estimate that over half the world's 6000 languages are now spoken
only by middle-aged or elderly people, dooming those languages -
- and the unique information they contain -- to extinction within
the next generation or two. Moreover, indigenous peoples
typically inhabit the most fragile and marginal of environments,
those most prone to environmental destruction.
Our response until recently has been to ignore the problem.
A more recent response still has been to send in ethnobiologists
and anthropologists to try to salvage the remnants of this
"indigenous library" before it is lost. Sometimes motivated by
greed, less often by genuine concern, these efforts are all but
doomed to failure or, at best, minimal success.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Why are we so inept at learning from our past mistakes?
In the 1960s and 1970s, with rising concern about the
extinction of species, we developed programs to "save" --
individually -- endangered animal and plant species. We
undertook heroic efforts on behalf of a handful of charismatic
species -- the California condor, white rhino, whooping crane,
and a few others. At great expense and with great fanfare, we
keep these species hovering on the brink, barely able to keep
them from slipping into oblivion.
We learned from this emergency-room approach -- basically
zoological triage -- that you can't save one species at a time.
You have to save the ecosystem on which the species depends, or
you are only postponing the inevitable.
Today, with indigenous peoples, we are repeating this
"emergency room" mistake over and over again. We are focusing
on "saving" individual cultures, without respect to their
environmental and cultural ecosystems.
A sustainable future for indigenous people means more than
having their cultural heritage written down somewhere in a
university archive. It means more than paltry royalties paid on
Western terms for the privilege of despoiling the habitats in
which they live, and on which their culture depends. It means
more than heroic, last-minute measures to gather the oral history
of village elders before they die.
It means more than inviting indigenous speakers last
December to speak at the U.N. to kick-off this International Year
of Indigenous Peoples, only to have them address a chamber
virtually empty of delegates.
But there may be hope on the horizon, hope that was born
last year in Rio. It remains to be seen whether that hope will
be realized.
The Earth Summit has accorded new status to the indigenous
cause, and given new impetus to your participation in shaping a
sustainable future. Principle 22 of the Rio Declaration, for
example, holds that "Indigenous people and their communities ...
have a vital role in environmental management and development
because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States
should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and
interests and enable their effective participation in the
achievement of sustainable development."
Ladies and gentlemen,
The theme for the Year of the Indigenous Peoples is
partnership. I believe that Agenda 21 provides the UN in
general, and especially UNEP and Habitat, with important new
opportunities to develop effective working partnerships with the
Earth's indigenous peoples, to bolster their traditional liminal
power as the interface with voice of nature. But to achieve that
partnership will require more than words, more than promises.
If indigenous peoples are to have full access to the
deliberations of the United Nations and a full say in issues that
affect you specific actions will be required.
I can only speak for a small corner of the United Nations -
Habitat and UNEP. But with your help I would like to take some
concrete actions in the Year of Indigenous Peoples.
I intend to pursue five initiatives:
First: I will appoint an Indigenous Advisor. Although we
have an outreach programme at UNEP it tends to succeed only in
sharing information with special groups. We have not been able
to infiltrate our policies and programmes - to be sensitive to
and take account of the needs and aspirations of indigenous
peoples across the spectrum of all of our activities.
Secondly: In consultation with the Indigenous Advisor, I
will initiate a complete review within UNEP's Environmental Law
Unit, of the framework and regulations that would be necessary
to secure the intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples.
The development of environmental law has been our strength over
the years - but I do not believe we have specifically
acknowledged the aspirations or needs of indigenous peoples.
Thirdly: As we move to strengthen our regional offices - and
to make them assume a service orientation I would like to convene
Indigenous People's Assemblies in each of the five regions. On
a smaller scale this could be a follow-up to the gathering of
indigenous elders in Rio.
We need direct and substantive feedback about the impact of
our decisions at the Earth Summit, and we need to hear it from
indigenous peoples themselves.
I also want to move quickly and decisively on programmes of
particular importance to the Americas:
My fourth suggestion then is that with the seven circumpolar
countries as responsible parties, I would like to see established
an Arctic Regional Seas Programme, similar to those existing for
the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and South Pacific. Drawing on the
wisdom and vision of the Inuit and other indigenous peoples of
the Arctic, this Programme will focus on the sustainable use and
preservation of the Arctic's fragile environment and resources.
This is "a land that lies in its innocence" - but not for long
I fear.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I sense your frustration. I share your disappointment with
the lack of concrete actions for indigenous peoples that have
emerged from Rio. I hope these five steps will be a start.
Finally, within Habitat we are currently discussing support
for indigenous peoples as they undertake an assessment of the
problems posed by the process of repatriation of indigenous
refugees moving across the Guatemala border with Mexico.
Following this systematic assessment - the first ever - we hope
to move quickly to help with the reconstruction of housing,
services, infrastructure and community structure - and to do so
while reinforcing the traditional environmental conservation
ethic with programmes aimed at soil and water protection,
prevention of desertification, protection of wetlands and
sustainable use of natural resources.
I'm frustrated, too -- I'm working to take UNEP and Habitat
down paths they haven't gone before, paths of cooperation,
encouragement, empowerment, and commitment. And this will not
be an easy job, even given the broad and powerful mandate of
Agenda 21.
But I'm learning valuable lessons from indigenous peoples
as I do. We want to walk in your world as well.
The sustainable cultures of indigenous peoples, for example,
are based on minimizing the risk of hunger, rather than
maximizing the accumulation of wealth. They use resources
sparingly, but intensively. They use systems of social security
based on the sharing of harvests. Land is not a commodity in the
indigenous tradition; it is a sacred trust that connects the
people to their environment.
UNEP and Habitat must incorporate these indigenous
principles in our work. We must minimize the risk of global
environmental and cultural degradation, rather than maximizing
our collection of data or building information empires. We are
no strangers to spare use of resources, but we can learn much
about how intensively those resources must be used. And we must
learn to be better sharers, rather than hoarders, of the
expertise, information and other resources that we have.
In turn there are two matters where you can be of specific
help. While it may be some time before the Biodiversity
Convention comes into effect, a number of provisions directly
will affect indigenous peoples. We want -- and need -- your
close cooperation and routine input as the original stewards and
guardians of biodiversity.
We know, for instance, that the traditional notion of
preserving "virgin" jungle and forest is in error; as many
observers have now noted, there really are very few if any
"virgin" forests in the world. Most have been managed to a
greater or lesser extent by aboriginal peoples over time to
maximize hunting, foraging, or medicinal uses in a sustainable
fashion. Habitat preservation and restoration efforts without
this understanding have been counterproductive of our efforts to
safeguard indigenous cultures.
To avoid this kind of error in the future, we welcome your
suggestions about the feasibility of perhaps identifying
traditional "wisdom keepers" from indigenous communities, who
could help guide our policies for species management, diversity
auditing, and habitat restoration.
We also encourage your participation as we draft new and
continuing programmes at Habitat, especially as the Habitat II
conference approaches. While displacement of indigenous peoples
from their native lands by corporate and industrial interests is
pervasive, across the globe more indigenous peoples are displaced
by the desperately poor than by mining and logging companies.
Russel Barsh writes in the Green Globe Yearbook for 1992,
"Ultimately, it is the process of modernization which is
responsible [but] indigenous peoples' territories realistically
cannot be made more 'safe' as long as they have extremely poor
non-indigenous peoples as neighbors."
Addressing this kind of problem, of course, is very much in
keeping with Habitat's role of fostering for the world's peoples
a livable home within a robust and sustainable community.
"Devising sustainable economies for non-indigenous
communities," Barsh concludes, "particularly in developing
countries, is a condition for the survival and sustainability of
indigenous communities."
Crafting such a sustainable future for all of Earth's
citizens requires that we depend even more on the power of
indigenous peoples to walk simultaneously in two worlds.
Balanced between short-term economic exploitation and the long-
term preservation of the lands you protect; guarding the wisdom
of the forest, jungle, or grassland, desert or waters: This is
a walk that we all must take, and we depend on you to be our
guides.
# # #