Linking Communities and Resource Rights: developing local-global feedback mechanisms for policy advocacy on biocultural diversity

PPI’s Dario Novellino and Miguel Alexiades are helping establish links between different indigenous communities and activists in South America and Southeast Asia. These exchanges promote the sharing of experiences as a way of

• Fostering reflection, learning and joint actions through the establishment of strategic alliances, and, 
• Addressing common problems regarding indigenous links, rights and claims over ancestral homelands and cultural landscapes. The ultimate goal is to enable the production of jointly-produced video materials that can be used to exert pressure at a national and international policy level. [See also policy program hyperlink]

The process of exchange entails both virtual encounters, notably through the exchange of locally-produced videos, as well as individual exchanges. A series of tentative exchanges have been established, for example, between the Ese Eja (Peru) and the Batak (Phillipines). Moreover, a direct exchange is currently being planned in which indigenous human rights and environmental activist and 2007 Goldman Prize Winner Julio Cusurichi (Shipibo indigenous group, Peru) will visit indigenous leaders and communities in Palawan, to share experiences and lessons regarding the impacts of mining and other forms of commercial extractivism upon indigenous communities, cultural landscapes and ancestral homelands.

These exchanges are directly facilitated through the direct collaboration with the project “Anthropological Approaches To Advocacy And Traditional Rights: developing local global feedback for policy advocacy on biocultural diversity”.[1] See also Participatory video and grassroots indigenous mobilisation in Madre de Dios, Peru.

[1] Centre for Biocultural Diversity, Department of Anthropology, University of Kent. http://www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology/department/research/environmental/advocacy.html