IWD2016 - Celebrating women: A champion for the rights of indigenous people

An encounter with an innovative technique known as participatory three-dimensional modelling was to prove a turning point in the life of a young tribeswoman from rural Chad. She now travels the globe to advocate for the rights of her own and other indigenous communities, and to press for their voice to be heard in negotiations about climate change, on which their futures depend.

Growing up as part of the M'bororo people – traditional semi-nomadic and nomadic herders living in Chad and neighbouring countries – nothing could have prepared Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim for the turn her life would take once she was introduced to participatory mapping. At the time, she was a young woman, working to gain recognition of her people's rights, and especially for access to the natural resources that are critical to their livelihoods.

Participatory three-dimensional modelling (P3DM), or participatory mapping, brings together traditional knowledge from local communities about their landscapes and ecosystems with data on physical features, such as land elevation and sea depth. The result is a scaled and geo-referenced three-dimensional (3D) model, which can be a powerful tool for knowledge building and communication, as well as for gaining recognition of local communities' rights to be involved in decision-making that affects their natural resources.

Hindou's introduction to P3DM came through the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), a network of 150 indigenous peoples' organisations in 20 African countries. IPACC had been introduced to participatory mapping by CTA's P3DM expert, Giacomo Rambaldi, and supported in its use as a tool for gathering evidence for indigenous peoples' arguments in national and international negotiations.

A bitter conflict

Encouraged to learn about the practice through a P3DM exercise in Gabon, Hindou spent two weeks living with local pygmies and helping them to build a participatory 3D map of their jungle landscape. The pygmies had lost some of their hunting and fishing rights when a national park was created, and the mapping exercise succeeded in its goal of convincing the government that these indigenous people had a right to be consulted about decisions affecting their homeland.

Hindou was hooked.



"It was a long way away from my own community and very different, but I found the exercise exciting and interesting," said Hindou, who is Director of the Association des Femmes Peules Autochtones du Tchad (AFPAT) and IPACC's Executive Committee representative for the Congo Basin region. "It was the first time I had seen all the intergenerational people mobilised – women, youths, men and elders. I realised that if we did this in my own community, it could help resolve a great many issues."

That chance came in 2012, when, with CTA support, a mapping exercise involving Hindou's own M'bororo people was organised in the southern district of Baïbokoum, the scene of conflicts between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers. Increasing scarcity of natural resources, especially water reserves, was being exacerbated by climate change and population growth, and the bitter contention between the two groups was threatening to spiral out of control.

Hindou was closely involved in the P3DM event, organising the workshop that preceded it, which brought together herders, scientists, UNESCO and World Meteorological Organization representatives as well as government officials for the first time. Once again, participatory mapping proved to be a winning approach. The model-making process enabled all players to have an overview of the contested area, highlighting where the farmers had barred the routes used by herders to take their cattle to water and identifying a range of solutions that would be acceptable to all.

The mapping exercise showed that indigenous peoples could play an effective role in decision-making, from which they had always been excluded in the past. And it gave a new sense of self-confidence to all members of the community, especially women.

"We took the opportunity to increase the capacity of women to express themselves, showing men that the women had a voice and that their opinions were sometimes more valuable than those of men – and the men accepted this," said Hindou. "As a result, women had a greater say in community affairs."

Powerful traditional knowledge

At a personal level, the mapping exercise also proved an eye opener for Hindou herself.

"The impact on me was huge. This was my community, so I knew all the traditional knowledge, but it helped me to understand things that didn't belong to my own generation," she recalls. "It changed my life forever."

Hindou now uses P3DM in all her work, to illustrate the importance of conserving traditional knowledge, how to marry it with scientific knowledge and using both to combat climate change and protect the environment.

Although her roots are still firmly anchored in her community, Hindou has become used to travelling the world to make presentations and put the indigenous people's case to high-ranking officials in climate-change negotiations. For the past 10 years, she has been a regular participant at meetings of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), which represents the interests of indigenous peoples throughout the world and presents these at COP negotiations.

"Climate change is a massive problem for indigenous people because we depend on the environment. For any indigenous people, from any corner of the world, livelihoods are linked to natural resources, for our food and medicine, for everything, so if there are floods or droughts the impact is greater for us," she said. "Of course, it is highly unusual for someone of my background to be travelling the world and speaking at conferences and negotiating. But for me, it is important to change the life of my community. I know my people are proud of what I am doing and I can never give up my work. I want to help my community to adapt to climate change, and you cannot talk about climate change without talking about the rights of indigenous people."

Reposted from Spore with permission.

Participatory mapping used to monitor illegal logging by the Baka in their ancestral forests

The Baka indigenous people in the forests of the Congo Basin have been using PDAs (personal digital assistants) with built-in global positioning systems (GPS) to collect data (such as sites of illegal logging and felled trees and forest sites of livelihood and cultural importance) in their ancestral forests. They then use this information to make interactive maps of their ancestral forests, to help lobby against illegal logging of the forest. These maps and the data collected can then be used by Cameroon's Ministry of Forests in the fight against illegal logging.

This video was produced by OKANI in April 2011.

Source: FPP

At global land rights conference, combining participatory mapping tools with traditional knowledge emerges as powerful weapon to fight massive land grabs

SAMOSIR, NORTH SUMATRA (30 August 2013) - With governments, loggers, miners and palm oil producers poaching their lands with impunity, indigenous leaders from 17 countries gathered on a remote island in Sumatra this week to launch a global fight for their rights that will take advantage of powerful participatory mapping tools combined with indigenous knowledge to mark traditional boundaries.

“It’s amazing to see indigenous groups from all over the world coming here armed with hundreds of detailed maps they have created with things like handheld GPS devices and Internet mapping apps,” said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, head of the Philippines-based Tebtebba, one of the co-organizers of the Global Conference on Community Participatory Mapping on Indigenous Peoples’ Territories, which took place on the edge of the largest volcanic lake in the world. “It’s a new and vivid way to illustrate how they and their ancestors have inhabited and worked these lands for thousands of years and have every right to assert their ownership.”

Indigenous groups from countries including Malaysia, Nepal, Panama, Mexico and Brazil, explained how they have adopted affordable, high-tech mapping technology to retrace the history of their land ownership and catalog their natural resources. Their hope is that detailed maps can help them fight the destruction of vast tracks of forests, peatlands and waterways—brazen incursions by government and industry that not only deprive indigenous peoples of their lands but also greatly accelerate the global loss of biodiversity and accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

For example, participants at the conference believe maps of this sort could help bolster the fight in Indonesia to stop the steady loss of traditional lands to palm oil production, logging and other industrial needs. Participants issued a declaration calling on the government of Indonesia to pass legislation, currently under consideration by the nation’s Parliament, which would provide new protections for the country’s 50 million indigenous peoples.

“We need to take advantage of new mapping tools to accelerate the process of mapping the more than 30 million hectares we have left to document—before they are swallowed up by plantations,” said Abdon Nababan, secretary general of Indonesia’s Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), which has helped communities across the country to map their customary forests as part of their efforts to defend their lands against development by palm oil and other industrial plantations and mining.

A recent report stated that the Indonesian government’s continued practice of granting national and international companies permission to convert millions of hectares of forests to palm oil and other plantations on lands that overlap with or abut indigenous territories often leads to the displacement of indigenous peoples—and a rash of sometimes-violent land disputes. The report on the state of large-scale agribusiness expansion in Southeast Asia by the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), also noted that the country faced more than 280 land conflicts across the country in 2012.

“Lines on a map have always been a source of conflict, but they are becoming more and more contentious around the world today,” said Tauli-Corpuz. “In many cases, government and military maps don’t acknowledge the presence of indigenous territories, leaving these communities vulnerable to land rights violations and conflicts, as well as the loss of their sustainable livelihoods, the onset of poverty, environmental degradation, and the loss of cultural heritage. Indigenous peoples are creating maps to protect their customary lands.”

Sleek computer-generated Indonesian maps presented at the conference documented cases in which the government had handed over indigenous territories to developers. In the case of the Lusan community in Borneo, three different government agencies had handed a community’s land over to three different companies—a logging group, a mining operation and a palm oil plantation.

“Without maps, it is difficult for indigenous peoples to prove that they have occupied their ancestral lands for centuries,” said Giacomo Rambaldi, a senior program coordinator at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), who has helped indigenous peoples to develop maps for more than 15 years. “If you are able to document and map your use of the resources since time immemorial, you have a chance of asserting your rights over land and water.”

It Takes a Village

Unlike satellite images or traditional political maps, the maps presented at the conference document key cultural and social sites, such as burial grounds, caches of medicinal plants, hunting trails or groves of specific species of trees. Based on pre-existing maps, satellite images or coordinates generated by hand-held GPS devices, these computer-generated documents or models record knowledge passed down through generations and integrate input from the entire community—including women and youth.

Conference participants heard that indigenous communities have successfully used these maps to protect their lands from land grabs and to monitor the impact of external forces on their lands.

In Brazil, South America’s largest democracy, an Afro-Brazilian community used a map to stop Cyclone-4, a space company jointly owned by Brazil and Ukraine, from expanding into their lands to build rocket launchers. These maps refuted claims by the company that only 10 communities would be impacted by the development by showing that more than 100 communities would be displaced. Cyclone-4’s expansion was blocked—though the government continues its efforts to build the rocket launchers on indigenous territories.

In Panama, which loses one percent of its tropical forests each year, members of the Guna community created a map—in the Guna language—to determine if the expansion of croplands had damaged sacred sites located in the rainforest surrounding their community. The map also served to show younger generations where these sites are located.

In Indonesia, the village of Pandumaan produced hand-drawn maps to scale, based on GPS data, to show that a pulp and paper company encroaching on their lands had razed the forests they rely on for myrrh—a fragrant resin that they sell for a living and use in spiritual rituals.

In Malaysia, which, along with Indonesia, is a leader in palm oil production, communities have used maps to win 25 of the 250 land disputes brought in front of the courts since 2001. The government continues to appeal the 25 cases that it lost in an attempt to regain the lands from indigenous peoples.

40 Million Hectares by 2020

Indonesia’s 2,200 indigenous communities, spread out across the country’s 18,307 islands, are the most prolific indigenous map-makers, the conference revealed. These mapping efforts have added urgency, since the country’s Constitutional Court decided in May that a line in the country’s 1999 Forestry Law, which states that customary forests are state forests, is not constitutional. To take advantage of this decision, which would first have to be implemented in national and local law, experts from the conference said it’s crucial for indigenous peoples to put these forests on paper.

AMAN’s Abdon Nababan said that he hopes to help map all 40 million hectares of land by 2020, and he called on the national Parliament to speed up the adoption of the Law on the Recognition and Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The body is currently reviewing a draft of the law.

“Without Indigenous Peoples, There Would Be No Forests”

“Mapping not only empowers indigenous communities with evidence that they can use to assert their land rights, it also provides communities with the ability to catalog the natural resources sheltered in their territories,” said Tauli-Corpuz, the head of Tebtebba. “These maps successfully demonstrate what we already know: that indigenous peoples are the best custodians of their forests and lands.”

A study by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) finds that biodiversity thrives in indigenous territories where communities are free to engage in hunting and other sustainable uses of natural resources—as opposed to state-held protected areas that ban such activities.

The National Coalition of Indigenous Peoples (KASAPI) in the Philippines arrived at the same conclusion. The project, which inventoried the resources in indigenous communities across the country, concluded from evidence gathered on the ground and from village elders—who recalled which species of plants have disappeared since their youth—that forests and lands owned and managed by indigenous peoples have stronger biodiversity than those that are under government control.

According to conference participants, maps that document a territory’s biodiversity provide indigenous communities and national governments alike with “baseline” knowledge about the health of their natural resources, enabling them to monitor changes to natural resources, such as the restoration—or degradation—of forests over time. Participants added that maps like these can show the impacts of climate change—and aid in the tracking of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Vu Thi Hien of the Centre of Research and Development in Upland Areas (CERDA), taught members of the Thai Nguyen community in Vietnam how to map in order to support an international climate change effort to reduce climate change through the protection and preservation of forests, known as REDD+. She said that local authorities were so impressed with the professionalism and accuracy of the maps that they adopted the maps for their own use.

“If the community is not empowered to assert their rights, they can only go so far, even with strong laws supporting land rights,” Tauli-Corpuz said.

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About Tebtebba
Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education) is an indigenous peoples’ organization born out of the need for heightened advocacy to have the rights of indigenous peoples respected, protected and fulfilled worldwide. It also advocates and works on the elaboration and operationalization of indigenous peoples’ sustainable, self-determined development. www.tebtebba.org.

About AMAN
AMAN’s mission is to pursue sovereignty, prosperity and dignity of indigenous peoples.  Established on 17 March 1999, its members consist of 2,240 indigenous communities in Indonesia. www.aman.or.id.

Speaking of Home - The Story of the Mount Elgon Ogiek Peoples

The Ogiek peoples live on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Kenya. This documentary shows the Ogiek's relationship to their homeland and to the world.

As indigenous peoples without official minority status in Kenya, the Ogiek have gone through evictions from their native land for decades. Time after another they have returned to their land to continue living in the forest.

The documentary is the Ogiek's story, in their own words, of their hopes before the 2013 Kenyan elections. It was filmed in Chepkitale, Mt. Elgon in 2012 during a mapping workshop.

Through developing a map of their land, the Ogiek not only strengthen their cultural identity, but can show that the land said to belong to someone else, is rightfully theirs.

Credits: The film has been produced by SHALIN Suomi ry and has been featured at the Helsinki African Film Festival

Oil palm expansion in the Philippines: geo-tagged evidences of an imminent tragedy

By ALDAW Network (Ancestral Land/Domain Watch): Between June and August 2009, an ALDAW mission travelled to the Municipalities of Brooke’s Point and Sofronio Española (Province of Palawan) to carry out field reconnaissance and audio-visual documentation on the social and ecological impact of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) plantations.  The mission’s primary task focused on two major objectives: 1) gathering data through interviews, ocular inspection and participatory geographic information systems methodologies; 2) providing communities with detailed information on the ecological and social impact of oil palm plantations, to allow them to make informed decisions while confronting oil palm companies, state laws and bureaucracy.

Successive ALDAW field appraisals in oil palm impacted areas took place between July 2010 and early 2013, and included the Municipalities of Aborlan, Rizal and Quezon. During ALDAW field research, GPS coordinates were obtained through the use of a professional device connected to the camera’s hot shoe.  

The geotagged images have been loaded into a geo-aware application and displayed on satellite Google map. The actual ‘matching’ of GPS data to photographs has revealed that, in specific locations, oil palm plantations are expanding at the expenses of primary and secondary forest and are competing with pre-existing cultivations (coconut groves, fruit tress, wet-rice, etc).

The conversion of productive paddy land and forest into oil palm plantations is particularly evident in the Municipality of Quezon .

Oil palm plantations have also expanded in areas used by indigenous people for the cultivation of local varieties of upland rice, root crops and fruit trees.  Furthermore, the fencing of large areas of oil palm plantations makes it difficult for local communities to reach their upland fields and forest.

Geottaged evidences have also revealed the exact location of commonly used NTFPs, such as buri palms (Corypa elata) and bamboos that are being destroyed through massive land clearing by oil palm companies.

Moreover, geocoded photos have provided indications on the location of rivers and freshwater sources that are being incorporated into oil palm plantations and that are likely to become polluted through the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

These freshwater sources provide potable water for local communities and some of them are essential for the maintenance of community-based dams.

Initial steps are now being taken to establish collaborative exchanges between the oil palm impacted indigenous communities of Palawan and those of Mindanao which are facing a similar fate.  These exchanges and cross-visits will include training courses on geotagging and participatory videos done by indigenous peoples (ALDAW staff) to other indigenous groups such as the Higaonon of Bukidnon.  In addition to this, during such cross-visits, common advocacy strategies to resist oil palm expansion nationwide will be identified.

In response to recent research findings, see Palawan Oil Palm Geotagged Report 2013 (Part 1 and Part 2)

ALDAW has launched two major campaign initiatives:

• Petition 1 (covers Palawan and Mindanao, addressed to the National Government) 
• Petition 2 (covers Palawan specifically, addressed towards the Provincial Government, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP)

Oil palm expansion on indigenous land both in Palawan and Mindanao should be stopped with haste, before its adverse socio-ecological impact becomes irreversible. Please, give your contribution by signing the above petitions.

Indonesian Government Accepts Ancestral Domain Maps: Making Indigenous Peoples visible within the Nation State

Jakarta, 14 November 2012 – The Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) and Network for Participatory Mapping (JKPP) have officially handed over ancestral domain maps registered with the Ancestral Domain Registration Agency (BRWA) to the Indonesia's Geospatial Information Agency (BIG) and Presidential Delivery Unit for Supervision and Control of Development (UKP4). This is the initial handover done by AMAN and JKPP. As a start, being submitted are 265 maps of ancestral domains covering a total area of 2,402,222 ha.

Ancestral domain maps available in BRWA, of which process facilitated directly by AMAN and JKPP as well as NGOs advocating the archipelago’s indigenous peoples, are prominent information to support One Map Indonesia carried out by the government through UKP4 and BIG. It is a collective movement of all including indigenous peoples, for managerial improvement of Indonesia in order to be a better Country.

“Making Indigenous Peoples visible within the State will help the government in managing a Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity), peaceful and equitable State based on the conditions and characteristics of indigenous peoples from across the Archipelago” said National Coordinator of JKPP Mr. Kasmita Widodo.

According the Secretary-General of AMAN Abdon Nababan, the handover aims as representation of indigenous peoples as well as their rights to lands, territories and natural resources in the Republic of Indonesia.

Indonesia has a constitution recognizing indigenous peoples but lacks of administrative law acknowledging the existence of indigenous peoples and their collective rights. Thus, this handover is part of welcoming the legalization of Recognition and Protection the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PPHMA) Bill currently discussed by House of Representatives. Once legalized, the Act will provide recognition, protection, and service to indigenous peoples of the archipelago as citizens of Indonesia.

“AMAN and JKPP want to encourage all development sectors in Indonesia currently managed by Ministries and other Government Institutions to work together under the leadership of the President to ensure national development that significantly able to alleviate land, territories and natural resources disputes that may thwart the development objectives” said Nababan and Widodo.

Further information:
Mr. Mahir Takaka
Deputy III of Secretary General
Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara/AMAN
mtakaka@aman.or.id

Non-edited press release received from JKPP

Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops: Carbon & Culture

The Surui Cultural Map shows the Surui tribe of the Amazon's vision of their forest, including their territory and traditional history. To create this map, Surui youth interviewed their elders to document and map their ancestral sites, such as the site of first contact with western civilization in 1969, places where the tribes battled with colonists in the 1970s, as well as places of interest, like sightings of jaguars, capybaras and toucans. To preserve their forest and their livelihood, the Surui are entering the Carbon Credit marketplace with software called Open Data Kit to measure carbon and monitor any illegal logging in their forests using Android smartphones.

Palawan, Voices from the lost frontier

In March 2006, the Philippines’ President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has called for a revitalization of mining nation-wide. The future of Palawan, known as the Philippines’ “Last Frontier” is now under serious threat. The island was declared a “Man and Biosphere Reserve” by the UNESCO and it is also the home of vanishing and isolated indigenous communities. Despite the numerous policies and laws establishing the entire province as a protected area, Palawan is becoming one of the most attractive mining investments destinations. This documentary is the outcome of a joint effort of indigenous communities, farmers, local NGOs and international institutions.