Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

CHAPTER 8
Signposts for the Road Ahead
The concluding part of this book contains two sections.
The first draws lessons that emerged from
discussions of the case studies at a workshop on
collaborating with indigenous groups held by
WWF in 1998. The second looks to the future
and what conservation organizations are doing, or
need to do, to advance stakeholder collaboration.
I. Lessons from Experience
In 1998 WWF staff from programs and projects
around the world met to pool their knowledge
about collaborating with indigenous groups and
to distill from firsthand experience lessons for
future conservation efforts. Case studies presented
by their authors provided rich, practical
information to fuel the discussions. While the
case study contexts were quite different, several
common themes emerged. In general, the cases
revealed that what worked best were communitylevel
efforts that involved
• dialogue, joint activities, and mutual learning
on shared interests in natural resource
management;
• in-depth understanding of the local socioeconomic
context and institutions;
• focus on a resource that the community
believed was threatened; and
• relatively small financial inputs and technology
that matched communities’ skill
levels.
The lessons are organized under four themes that
were highlighted during the workshop discussion:
finding common goals, strengthening
indigenous institutions for collaboration, sharing
conservation knowledge, and establishing appropriate
project processes. Discussion of each
theme concludes with a series of recommendations
for how conservation organizations can
improve collaboration with indigenous groups.
Many of these recommendations are applicable
to work done at larger scales, such as ecoregionbased
conservation.
1.1 Finding Common Goals
WWF’s experience reveals that while the goals of
conservation organizations and indigenous peoples
often overlap, their motivations and methodologies
often differ. Indigenous people want to
use natural resources sustainably to ensure their
livelihoods, maintain control over their lands,
preserve their cultural heritage, and provide for
their children and grandchildren. In Brazil,
Namibia, and Bolivia, indigenous communities