Background

Although some progress has been reported with regard to Sustainable Development, indicators show that the situation has not improved enough. Current thinking is pointing at the importance of the interplay between biological and cultural diversity. The loss of Bio-Cultural Diversity has a negative impact on local governance, health, food sovereignty and management of natural resources. This is affecting the situation of indigenous and marginalized peoples leading to further poverty, environmental degradation and increases the north-south disparities.

Approaches that are focussing on linking topical issues such agriculture, health, use of natural resources, biodiversity or ecology with culture, spirituality, social and economic organisations or identity constitute essential features of sustainable development. There is a growing number of initiatives worldwide, aiming to translate the ideas of bio-cultural diversity into practice. Examples are manifold community based organisations, social, indigenous and environmental movements, NGOs, Universities and many national and international organisations. Specific programmes are being implemented by:

ILO (The Interregional Programme to Support Self-Reliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples through Cooperatives and Self-Help Organizations (INDISCO) under a DANIDA/ILO Framework Agreement).
UNESCO (Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity, 4th International Conference on Cultural Policy Research – ICCPR 2006, LINKS Project, work on Cultural Landscapes and Sacred Sites).
World Bank (Indigenous Knowledge Programme).
UN Human Rights Council (Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP); Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples).
FAO (Globally Important Ingenious Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS); UN System Network on Rural Development and Food Security; Socio-economic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme).
IUCN (Conservation for Poverty Reduction Initiative; Initiative for the Protection of Sacred Sites; Task Force on Culture and Conservation of the Commission on Environmental, Economy and Social Policy – CEESP; Task Force on Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas of the World Commission on Protected Areas – WCPA).
International cooperation agencies: Several special programmes on culture, development and indigenous peoples (SDC’s bio-cultural programme or BioAndes, DANIDA’s Danish Support Programme to Indigenous Peoples, SIDA’s support to LEISA, European Centre for Development Policy Management-ECDPM, DGIS’s COMPAS Programme and Prolinnova, AECI’s Indigenous, Araucaria and Azahar Programmes).
Research and international NGOs:Many Universities have special programmes on indigenous knowledge and development, often coordinated with international NGOs such as WWF International, Terralingua, the International Institute on Environment and Development (IIED), etc. In Switzerland the University of Bern (CDE), the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED) in Geneva, the ETH in Zürich, among others, are pioneering in this field.
International indigenous and community networks like Via Campesina, the International Indigenous Biodiversity Forum, and others are developing their own activities to promote endogenous and cultural diversity approaches in environment and development.
Foundations such as the Ford Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, the Christensen Fund, the Fondation Euro-méditerranéenne Anna Lindh pour le Dialogue entre les Cultures, the First Nations Development Institute, etc., are increasingly developing portfolios of support to communities and organisations advancing the agenda of endogenous development and bio-cultural diversity.
The private sector is also showing growing interest in these approaches, as evidenced for example in the expanding fair-trade networks that specifically support local cultures and sustainable production by local communities.

COMPAS (Comparing and Supporting Endogenous Development) is one of the international programmes working on bio-cultural diversity for the last 10 years. It is a network of 30 member organisations, aiming at cooperation between rural communities, NGOs and Universities from 15 countries in Africa, Asia, South America and Europe. The main objective is to develop innovative approaches, instruments and methods for Endogenous Development and bio-cultural diversity. This is understood as ‘development from within’; based mainly, but not exclusively, on the highly diverse indigenous and local cultures and their corresponding worldviews, norms, values, forms of social and economic organisation and related forms of use of natural resources. Cultural diversity, rather than being seen as an obstacle, is perceived as an acknowledged potential for sustainable development.

The programme started in 1996 and has since then implemented 70 pilot projects for endogenous development in Latin America (Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Colombia and Chile), Africa (Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, Togo, Benin), Asia (India, Sri Lanka) and Europe (Netherlands and Switzerland). Core funding has been received from DGIS. Additional funding was received from Oxfam/Novib, UNESCO, CTA.

SDC has contributed to the international exchange and planning workshop in Bolivia in 1996 and to the evaluation and planning workshop in Chennai in 2001. AGRUCO in Bolivia has emerged as organisation for endogenous development with funding of SDC and presently plays an important role in the initiation and coordination of regional initiatives in Latin America.

During ten years of field-based activities, COMPAS partners learned that it is possible to support endogenous development activities at local level. The partners developed a wide range of practical methods, have started networking at national and regional level and have developed a learning guide for endogenous development that can be used for capacity development of field staff and upscaling the activities. Collaboration with universities have resulted in support to field work as well as to incorporation of endogenous development notions in their teaching and research programmes. A number of policy workshops have been held at national or regional level on themes such as local health traditions, bio-diversity, NEPAD and endogenous development, local management of natural resources and bush burning, intra-cultural dialogues and education and on the scientific basis of local knowledge.

These policy workshops were all showing that the relationship between sciences and other forms of knowledge requires a dialogue on the worldviews and the corresponding values that are underlying to indigenous, endogenous, local and scientific forms of knowledge. Consequently policy recommendations have been made on the relationships between worldviews, sciences and endogenous development.

Regional conferences on worldviews, sciences and endogenous development [top]

In order to increase the impacts at the level of local communities, NGOs, policy makers in national and international organisations, indigenous people and higher education, COMPAS has organised three regional conferences on the interplay between the worldviews and the ways of knowing, endogenous development, bio-cultural diversity in Africa, South America and Europe. A similar conference for Asia will be held in Bangalore in July 2006.

The regional conferences showed that the contradictions between mainstream initiatives for development and endogenous sustainable development can be overcome through more systematic and comprehensive societal dialogues between scientists, policy makers, development agencies and local actors, which include the differences in values, worldviews and ways of knowing. Reflecting on the relationship between the different worldviews and the related forms of knowledge, allowed to jointly learn that in principle no form of knowledge is universal or a priori better than other ones. Knowledge is a human product and thus fallible and never complete. We have to accept the principle of uncertainty in science, and thus in policy making and planning of actions.

This notion provides a basis for a ‘polylogue’ in which scientists, experts, practitioners, business people and policy makers are equally contributing, and in which perspectives from different cultures and sciences can be considered. Instead of being driven by economic or political power and the expectation of predictability and control, the emerging ‘polylogue’ is driven by the power of the better argument and the interest to listen and learn and acceptance of uncertainty. Two sources seem to provide important inputs for reshaping sciences, policies and practices:

The manifold expressions of local values and of what generally is called ‘local’, ‘traditional’, ‘indigenous’, ‘native’, or ‘practical’ forms of knowing. These are often considered as key resources for overcoming materialistic or technocratic notions of development. The renewed attention to these forms of knowledge has led to more emphasis on the very basis of their emergence and evolution. As a consequence, the philosophical foundations in which these forms of knowledge are rooted has been put at the centre of the debates. Worldviews have become therefore part of the reflection on how to re-orient current approaches of development. Worldviews, insights and ways of knowing from non-western cultures are becoming more explicit, relevant and popular. Experiences and insights from local people all over the world show the great diversity of values, worldviews and ways of knowing that has relevance for development and sciences.
Although the knowledge of people outside the academia is not yet fully valued, there are tendencies within the scientific communities to shift from a purely disciplinary to a societal and integrated mode of knowledge production, dissemination and application. It is now widely recognised that the complex problems of the current world are more likely to be resolved by combining different scientific and other forms of knowledge and wisdom. In such a perspective, new insights from sciences such as quantum physics, societal economy, social-ecology, transdisciplinarity, ethnoecology, or non-dualistic perspectives of mind and matter are increasingly challenging the dominant worldviews and sciences.

The issues at stake are therefore relevant for the so-called ‘developed, developing and transition countries’. Also in the West issues like globalisation, biological and cultural diversity, duality and the balance between material and social needs are relevant. What are the implications on the way science and policies are being shaped and what concrete activities could be undertaken in the domains of production, land use, consumption, social organisation and sense giving?

The conference Endogenous Development and Bio-Cultural diversity of October 2006, aims at a ‘polylogue’ on endogenous development and bio-cultural diversity between practitioners, scientists, experts and policy makers. It will serve as a basis for getting engaged more strongly with international policy making organisations and will broaden alliances and exchange between COMPAS and other interested organisations.

The conference in Geneva will be held at the end of the second phase of COMPAS. After a start up in 1996 and 1997, the COMPAS programme was implemented in two phases between 1998¬2003 and 2003-2006.

Partner meeting of COMPAS in Poland, September 2006 [top]

The Geneva conference will be preceded by a meeting of the partners of COMPAS.

During two weeks, some 60 representatives of the partners will work together to formulate their conclusions on the experiences of the last 10 years of endogenous development and the impact it has on bio-cultural diversity. They will formulate their conclusions, elaborate the methods they have used and plan for a new four-year period for the years 2007-2010. Initiatives for follow up activities in the different regions, for learning and sharing and collaboration of different stakeholders in region-based programmes and at international level will be formulated.

The partner meeting for exchange, documentation and planning will be held in Poland from 18-29 September. It has the format of a write shop, which will ensure that concrete deliverables and workplans will be made that can be presented and discussed during the Geneva conference.

The ambitions of the COMPAS partners is that in the future more organisations will be involved in the programme for endogenous development and bio-cultural development and for that reason, activities for outreach, upscaling, training and policy dialogues will be elaborated. The conference in Geneva will offer the opportunity to share the experience with others, but especially also to seek strategic partners for collaboration in the new programme phase.

Enhancing dissemination and policy dialogues [top]

A review of the first ten years of work of COMPAS in endogenous development and bio-cultural diversity showed that the experiences, approaches, methodologies and research results achieved at local, national and regional levels are promising. In order to enhance, further disseminate and strengthen approaches to endogenous development and bio-cultural diversity, strategic alliances with a diversity of development organisations, scientific institutions and policy making organisations will be sought.

The conference will be therefore based on sharing experiences, as done in the previous regional conferences of COMPAS and meetings of other relevant institutions. The exchange of experiences will serve for a double purpose: on the one hand, it will allow deepening insights on the potential and limitations of endogenous approaches to development. On the other hand, the conference will help engage organisations that have a specialized capacity for influencing in processes of international policy making. On this basis, the conference will serve for defining a joint strategy for the enhancement of endogenous development and bio-cultural diversity as a cornerstone of sustainable development that aims at a more coherent integration of bio-cultural diversity into policies, approaches and practices related to international cooperation, research, development and innovation as well as into elementary and higher education and training organisations (Universities, Technical Institutes, Schools, NGOs, Foundations, etc.).