Such documents are already used by some international authorities, such as the World Bank.
There are a few fundamental criteria all development projects ought to take into account, one of which is the fact that the project must be adapted to the techniques of the population in question and respect its customs.
Should the project imply drastic economic and cultural changes for the population it will affect, one ought to be particularly vigilant and look at who elaborated the project and where it originated.
Preparing a project :
- Planners ought to be trained in the social anthropology of traditional populations and, if not, they must at least be aware of and informed on the research that has been carried out in the subject.
- In the first place it is necessary that indigenous communities themselves should wish for policies of self-help : one should therefore let them speak up ; they must take their development and future into their own hands.
- It is necessary to elaborate projects organizing gradual development that will stretch out over a long period of time ; this is a prerequisite for smooth development as communities can thus adapt without too great a trauma and profit by the alteration, fully assimilating the new techniques and new economic and social environment.
- A preliminary analysis of available data on the population and region in question is necessary before any kind of commitments are made.
- Through the analysis of available information, one should set up regional boundaries and define the entities within which the same methods could be applied (geographical areas).
- Prepare a document assessing the degree to which the populations involved in the project are dependent on the forest environment. The assessment of the situation must rely on serious fieldwork.
- Carefully identify the partners and participants involved :
- indigenous organizations
- traditional leaders
- politicians and political parties
- supervisory bodies (agriculture, services more particularly in charge of indigenous populations, education, environment)
- indigenists, anthropologists, naturalists
- Non Governmental Organizations
It is particularly important to assess carefully to what degree native individuals who introduce themselves as spokesmen for a group are actually true representatives. They could be individuals who have long since assimilated the dominant culture, who have been separated for years from the community they originally came from, and who are no longer aware of the real situation as it stands now. They could of course be individuals who were elected, but they are usually manipulated from outside the group.
Finally, one should remember that the NGOs can turn out to be expensive intermediaries, occasionally incompetent, and not necessarily indispensable.
- There should be preliminary contact with the indigenous populations and they should be consulted about the development project while it is being prepared ; one should take the time to listen and speak to them, to discuss the project ; the local people must be the masters of their own development ; members of the indigenous populations must be made to feel aware of their own responsibilities early on in the project's elaboration.
- The people must be made aware of the project and its implications, possibly by relying on those individuals who are already aware of the consequences of their environment's degradation.
- These matters must be discussed in the indigenous population's mother-tongue (and not in french, english or any other major lingua franca).
- Regular 'consultations of the population' must be organized so as to limit the influence and presence of local authorities and go beyond stereotypical statements.
- Anthropologists, both westerners who have studied the ecology of forest environment, and those belonging to the country, must be involved in the studies carried out in the field preparing for the development project.
- The above mentioned criteria for assessment must be applied in the field, and provide the following information :
- language(s) and possibilities for learning the language (syllabaries, dictionaries, courses) ;
- type of habitat, size and structure of settlement, seasonal mobility ;
- land tenure and concepts of space ;
- traditional political power and mode of representation ;
- the economies and types of exploitation of the environment : agricultural activities (field size, rotation, duration of fallow) ; hunting, gathering and fishing activities (products, distances that have to be covered, seasonality of products) ; extraction activities ; etc.;
- diet ;
- problems with which the society is confronted.
- As far as choosing the participants is concerned (agricultural advisors, nurses, etc), it is important to take into account the traditional division of labour within the society : and more particularly, involve female agricultural advisors to supervise agricultural work, since cultivation in a forest environment has always been carried out by the women of a group.
- Whenever possible, the indigenous organizations and customary leaders should be responsible for implementing the project, or at least involved in its implementation.
The implementation of the project should regularly undergo internal and external assessment.
Teams created to assess the project should be made up of members of mixed origins (westerners and country nationals) ; there should be a majority of participants and consultants who have a thorough (and up to date) knowledge of the area, while generalist experts should be a minority ; of course, the representatives of the community affected by the project have a fundamental role.