Participatory video empowering Indigenous youth

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Celebrating the United Nations International Youth Day Read our article in the latest Darwin Initiative Newsletter which features how our on-going project activities are seeking to empower youth in Indigenous communities. The article shows how the project is engaging young people through participatory video to explore how traditional knowledge contributes to conservation and the relationship between Indigenous communities and protected areas. It highlights the benefits of participatory video in providing skills and confidence to young people to research their own … Read More

International Day for Biodiversity (IDB) 2018

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Celebrating 25 years of ‘Safeguarding Life on Earth’! As we celebrate the world’s diverse variety of life, IDB 2018 is an opportunity to raise awareness about the growing threats and challenges facing biodiversity. Action is needed now more than ever, and traditional knowledge can play an important role in this process. To read the article online click on the link below: https://issuu.com/gytimes/docs/guyanatime_20_may_2018 (see page 14)

The integrating of traditional knowledge into national policy project continues to touch communities

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Communities using participatory video to communicate with policy-makers Darwin Project: Integrating Traditional Knowledge into National Policy and Practice is one-year into its community work. Communities that have already been trained are making their videos. Work scheduled to engage communities associated with other Protected Areas in the coming months. Very exciting! The NRDDB team is still on the go; communicating with and visiting communities of the North Rupununi and afar, working to building capacities and enhancing the skills of the young … Read More

Launch of Darwin Initiative project

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Integrating Traditional Knowledge into National Policy and Practice in Guyana Working in Guyana, this project will address Aichi Biodiversity Target 18, incorporating traditional knowledge [TK] into biodiversity policy for poverty reduction, by 1) evaluating TK integration using case studies focused on protected areas management, 2) building institutional capacity in TK integration, and 3) developing a National Action Plan for TK. Download the project flyer here: Darwin Flyer

Why bridging traditional knowledge and environmental science matters

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Although there is growing recognition of the relevance of local knowledge systems for conservation and environmental management, Western science continues to value quantitative data on a relatively small number of variables. Local ecological knowledge, on the other hand, qualitatively integrates complex situations over different spatio-temporal scales and across disciplines to provide holistic interpretations. Engagement with local ecological knowledge is typically to validate it through scientific knowledge, and/or to assimilate it within Western worldviews of nature and the environment e.g. community … Read More

Are Community Owned Solutions against progress?

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It’s often been argued that, increasingly, Indigenous communities, especially younger generations, are evolving towards more ‘Western’ lifestyles while leaving behind traditional indigenous practices, thus making the communities ‘less indigenous’. In this discourse, there is a Western ideal representation of indigenous communities as ‘primitive noble savages’ which often contradicts the actual day-to-day practices and customs of indigenous communities. It is important to make it clear that the ‘community owned solutions’ approach does not intrinsically favour traditional practices or prevent communities from … Read More

Why Community Owned Solutions

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Why are we advocating community owned solutions? Highly marginalised groups, such as Indigenous peoples, are generally represented as ‘poor’, ‘backwards’ and ‘requiring help’. This deficit model too often prevails at all levels of policy and decision making, where government and market-led approaches to sustainable development are generally designed by external experts. Many of these policies propose generic, blueprint solutions which may undermine already existing local solutions. The Cobra Collective has shown that Indigenous peoples and other marginalised groups are a … Read More