- are an integral part of the ecological history of forests,
- possess a vast knowledge of forest ecology and resources,
it is necessary to :
- study the kind of jobs and professional activities in which their technical abilities and knowledge could be used and be of value within the programmes dealing with environmental issues ;
in parks and reserves of course, but also in all the work involved in drawing up inventories of available resources and in research on non-timber resources. ;
- stop non-indigenous populations from entering in national reserves or indigenous territories ;
- study possible improvements of the organization of buffer zones or of authorized human activities compatible with the preservation of the biodiversity of protected areas (parks and nature reserves).
To protect the environment outside the nature reserves, it is necessary to :
- restrict or even dismantle networks of professional hunting and fishing that turn out to destroy the environment ;
very gradually one should aim at reducing the use of firearms (particularly in Africa) and in any case one should aim at restricting intensive hunting, whatever arms they use;
- restrict the immigration of people coming from areas with high population densities ;
it seems unlikely that such a trend could occur without being backed up by a flexible policy of birth control (and not of sterilization as some have suggested !).
a) Regional balances
- regional balances have to be reorganized
"Involving indigenous populations in the effort for national construction" does not mean pushing them into producing cash crops;
- local commercial networks ought to be taken into account.
b) Reorganization of networks providing supplies to towns
- promote and encourage intensive livestock breeding in areas adequate for such activities so as to provide food supplies for the towns ;
improving, within a development project, the infrastructure of pastoral communities specialising in livestock breeding ; encouraging people to eat cattle meat by lowering the purchase price and making it lower than the price of game on the town markets.
- promote plantations near and around towns to provide firewood and charcoal supplies ;
- develop food-producing agriculture and improve local distribution towards towns ;
given the considerable drop in the market price of cash crops, it is both vital and urgent that these populations should diversify food-producing agriculture and gradually replace cash crops with food crops.
c) An economy which respects nature
- highlight and give weight to those agricultural systems, such as agroforestry, that include methods aiming at enriching the natural environment ;
immigrant pioneering populations also ought to be taught the value of shifting swidden cultivation ;
- preserve (after a systematic inventory has been drawn up) the traditional cultivated plant varieties ;
(gene pool)
- experiment growing plants that would yield enough for intensive gathering activities to be carried out ; rattans, Brazil nuts, etc ;
- experiment managing wild animal populations and develop some form of breeding ;
- train technicians and local advisors for the development of agroforestry ;
- encourage relationships between different developing countries ("South-South") for the transfer and learning of the techniques of agroforestry ;
(for example between swidden cultivators in Java and Equatorial Africa).
Apply existing laws regarding people and land.
Investigate legislations that woud take into account 'minority rights' :
- apply the right to citizenship, without subsidiary limitation clauses ;
- recognize common property ;
- provide a legal status ('association', 'group', 'local council', etc) to indigenous communities that have not been registered, and recognize their own leaders ;
- extend recognition of traditional land tenure to the forested areas used for gathering, to the areas in which they tend the trees though they did not actually plant them, to the hunting and fishing grounds -i.e. recognize land that has not been affected by agriculture as part of the territory covered by customary land tenure ;
only recognizing the land that has been cleared actually encourages deforestation ;
- investigate hunting and fishing regulations that would draw a clear distinction between hunting and fishing for subsistence requirements and for trade, that would not see hunting for subsistence purposes as poaching, and that would distinguish between traditional and modern techniques ;
overmore, it is important to be particularly careful in choosing which animal species should be protected and one should not systematically abolish the category of 'pests' in forest legislations : since some large mammals do destroy the crops people live off, having more of them will only lead cultivators to develop hunting strategies to protect themselves ;
- apply the laws against poaching irrespective of whether the poacher is native or non-native, and strictly control the sales networks ;
in other words, have control over the intermediaries and the professional hunter-poachers, penalize the places where wild game is sold (markets in the big towns or in the forestry and mining settlements, restaurants, etc) and not the indigenous communities that eat the game they themselves have caught ;
- investigate what contracts allow hunting and gathering for food and agricultural activities to be carried out in protected areas and on reserves, that allow indigenous populations to continue living in these areas under specified conditions ;
- investigate the rights of 'intellectual property' over forest resources ;
- investigate the compensation mentioned in permits and contracts for forest exploitation (logging, mining, etc) ;
- investigate the legislations that would discourage indigenous populations from selling their land to non-natives ;
This in order to check non-indigenous migrations and the expansion of industrial and food-producing agriculture that destroy the forest ecosystem.
- look at intelligent literacy programmes, the kind of teaching adapted to local conditions (i.e. taking into account such things as seasonal mobility, the parents' knowledge of the forest environment, etc) ;
- through education, encourage the populations' awareness of available choices and their consequences so that they can take their future into their own hands ;
- systematically encourage and extend development programmes managed by the people themselves ;
- investigate the kind of measures that would aim at companies exploiting the forest environment and encourage them to involve indigenous populations within their activities ;
- involve the local residents in the development of forest exploitation zones and in the elaboration of concession permits ;
- mention on all permits that local residents should receive dividends.