1.Front section - IUCN

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Friends for Life: New partners in support of protected areas
Introduction
Durban served as a unique meeting point, where
representatives from indigenous peoples, more
numerous than in any previous World Parks Congress
WPC, and protected area professionals, jointly took
important steps forward in recognising their common
concerns and interests and achieved real progress on
indigenous involvement in protected area design and
management, based on addressing and redressing the
past wrongs. On the one hand, the protected area
community recognised the legitimate interests of
indigenous peoples in conservation matters, and the
need to overcome the heavy legacy of insensitive
protected area policy and practice towards indigenous
peoples. Good practice of recent years and policy
advancement on the links between protected areas and
people, further consolidated by the CBD programme
of work on protected areas adopted by COP7 in
February 2004, were reviewed and discussed in
Durban, and prompted initiatives that included
qualitative benchmarks for protected area
performance in the areas of indigenous rights, more
diverse governance options and equitable cost and
benefit-sharing as part of a broader reconciliation
effort.
On the other hand, indigenous representatives
conveyed their commitment and interest in protected
areas, confirming their share of responsibilities in
reaching biodiversity conservation objectives.
The outputs of the Congress testify to this window
of opportunity. The Durban Accord urges
commitment to a wide range of indigenous concerns.
The Durban Action Plan lists recognition and
guarantee of indigenous rights in relation to natural
resource management and biodiversity as one of ten
major outcomes. Further, the importance of taking
into account indigenous rights, interests and
aspirations and their full involvement and
participation runs through other major outcomes and
suggested activities of the Action Plan.
Of the 32 Congress recommendations, six have
major sections on indigenous concerns. Another 15
mention indigenous peoples in their problem analysis
or recommendations, and nine more relate to
indigenous issues, in the context of broader equity,
community and poverty-oriented language.
Altogether, the Durban outputs represent an
impressive set of achievements in relation to the views
and interests of indigenous peoples on protected areas
(all are available at www.iucn.org/wcpa/).
The process of building mutual support and trust
between conservation organizations and indigenous
peoples has a long history, albeit often dominated by
polarized positions, conflicts and lack of dialogue. In the
past decade, a wide range of international and national
policy efforts have sought to overcome these differences,
stimulated by increasing dialogue between indigenous
peoples and conservation actors. These have included
the Seventh Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar
Convention, which adopted “Guidelines to establish and
strengthen participation of local communities and
indigenous peoples in the management of wetlands”.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, the
Intergovernmental Forum on Forests and the United
Nations Forum on Forests have all made strong
recommendations on matters related to indigenous
peoples and protected forest areas. The World Heritage
Convention has been increasingly addressing
indigenous peoples issues, especially in the context of
the protection of cultural landscapes. The CBD is the
environmental agreement with most relevance to
indigenous peoples, and its recently adopted
Programme of Work on Protected Areas mentions the
role of local and indigenous peoples. Among nongovernmental
conservation organizations, WWF issued
a Statement of Principles on Indigenous Peoples and
Conservation in 1996. The IUCN World Conservation
Congress has adopted several resolutions on indigenous
peoples and conservation, such as 1.53 on Indigenous
Peoples and Protected Areas; and the joint IUCN-WWF
Principles and Guidelines on Indigenous and Traditional
Peoples and Protected Areas were adopted in 1999. A
range of policy statements and decisions of conservation
organizations and fora exist on the matter. For a review
of these processes, see Oviedo (2003a) and Castelo and
Schielmann (2001).
Many problems remain, however, at the government
and national implementation level. Protected area
legislation and policy have slowly changed in some
countries on matters relevant to indigenous peoples; in
other countries, changes are yet to be seen. In the field,
despite policy progress, examples of conflicts and
inequities still abound.
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