• The report
• The organization of the project
• The approach

FIRST PART: ANALYSIS OF THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HUMAN POPULATIONS AND THE TROPICAL FOREST

SECOND PART: REGIONAL STUDIES

1 - Equatorial America

2 - Insular Asia

1. Peninsular Malaysia

2. Phillipines

3. Indonesian Islands

4. Borneo

5. New Guinea

3 - Central Africa

STATE OF INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS LIVING IN RAINFOREST AREAS

"It is a sorry thing to see that, as a rule, one tends to apply the simple formula which consists in destroying the forest to replace it with a domestic ecosystem, the homogeneity of which makes forest exploitation easier, and all the while, one neglects possible original solutions based on rational management of the natural ecosystem."

J. BARRAU ,1979 : 486

The report

This report (contract no. B91/ 4-3046/ 16203, signed on March 1, 1992) was to present detailed information on matters such as :

- location, size and social organization of a population;

- its political organization, interaction with the national administrative system, and political representation;

- its economic organization and subsistence strategies, looking at whether the latter are dependent on the rainforest or not;

- its role in regional, national and international economy;

- social status, problems related to health and schooling; human rights and their application;

- contacts with non-indigenous populations;

- threats and pressures indigenous populations have to put up with and the risks involved.

The report is divided into three sections :

- a summary presenting an overall picture of the interactions between man and rainforest, followed by recommendations;

- a set of dossiers and geographical studies, presenting the different ethnic groups and their way of life for each geographical area (the Amazon Basin of South America, Equatorial Africa, and South-East Asia plus Papua New Guinea);

- an atlas : 15 plates placing all the indigenous populations within their ecological context (separate document).

The organization of the project

There were six stages in the work process :

- choosing the criteria on which to base a definition of 'indigenous populations living in rainforest areas', and setting up a questionnaire to carry out a survey;

- establishing the boundaries of the forest areas under study and drawing up a list of the different ethnic groups living within these boundaries in each country;

- drawing up an inventory of existing documentation, a bibliography, and a list of specialists in the field;

- personal contacts or correspondence with these specialists, circulating the questionnaire, trips abroad to collect information (U. S. A, Europe, Guiana);

- examining and analysing the bibliography and the answers given by specialists;

- analysis of the data and writing up the final document.

The approach

Before going any further, it is important to make a few points regarding our approach : the populations that we were requested to write up a report on are among the most highly diversified and least known populations in the world. This is partly due to the fact that they generally live in remote areas, and it is therefore difficult to have any form of contact with them, but also because they often have an inferior status within the social system of their own country.

The documents that have been published so far are very fragmentary : it is sometimes difficult to find even one bibliographical reference for some ethnic groups. Where information is available, ecological and economical aspects are, curiously enough, often dealt with least of all. Other references are very old and do not necessarily reflect the modern transformations that have since taken place and which have altered the way of life of these populations. However, we did try to bring together many different documents, covering as wide a range as possible, and thus came to consult some 1700 references (books and articles) in the course of our work.

Through a critical analysis of these sources, supplemented by direct contacts with specialists and our own experience in the field, we have tried to present an accurate picture of the information available on these populations.

For the purpose of our work, we had to define geographical areas that actually cover wider areas than the countries mentioned in the contract because the territory of many ethnic groups extends beyond the borders of any single state. Consequently, the areas under study have been stretched so as to include the whole of the Amazon and Orinoco Basins (this adds the Guiana, Ecuador and Venezuela to Brazil, Peru and Bolivia) and the whole of the Congo Basin (Congo, Cameroon, Guinea, Central African Republic, Gabon and Zaire).

We have been working with two aims in mind :

- one aim was to draw up an inventory, as precise as possible, of the different ethnic groups living in the remaining forested areas ; this was done using the most recent vegetation, linguistic and ethnographic maps and current scientific research ;

- the other aim was to determine to what extent each population is dependent on the forest environment for its economy, so as to then present all the different economic and ecological types implemented by forest populations in each geographical area .

We have tried to provide accurate demographic data, but this was not always an easy task : in many cases there have been no censuses or else the available data is contradictory (this kind of information is often lacking even for the country as a whole !). The figures provided here are not exact figures (unless stated otherwise), but they give us an idea of the proportions involved and enable us to draw comparisons between different situations.

As it turned out, there seem to be vast numbers of indigenous populations living in rainforest areas : over 1500 different groups. Drawing up a list of these populations and commenting on each seemed therefore unthinkable and beyond the scope of this report. Instead, we have brought together the available information on economic and ecological matters, category by category, so as to provide as clear an idea as possible on the kind of life led by forest populations, and more particularly on the importance of the forest in their lives. Again, lack of adequate documentation implies that the information given here should be seen as providing examples, not accurate and detailed studies on any single ethnic group.

Also, for each country we were looking at, we investigated what legislation governs human beings and their relationship to land, and what projects and dangers threaten the survival of these people.

The present report is deliberately focused on the ways of life of forest populations and their relationship with the forest ecosystem ; of course, we do mention the human dimension of some problems, but we will not attempt to provide a detailed study of human rights, as this would be a matter for a different report by other specialists.

However, we must emphasize the importance of the tragedy that is unfolding as tropical rainforests gradually disappear and the populations living off them are completely transformed before any kind of knowledge has been acquired as to their ancestral traditions.