Pre-Congress Workshop on Conservation by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

Contributed by the Global Diversity Foundation

The ICCA Consortium, the Global Diversity Foundation (GDF) and the BEDE Network jointly proposed an international workshop (May 17-19, 2012) on “Conservation by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities: Advances in Participatory Action Research, Dissemination and Advocacy”, a follow-up to the workshop on “Community Conservation in Practice” held before the 2010 ISE Congress in Tofino, Canada. This workshop is closely linked to Congress session 44.

Limited to 30 participants, the event was held at Cravirola, a cooperatively run farm located near Montpellier. It brought together indigenous peoples, members of local communities and collaborators currently engaged in:

1. Monitoring and carrying out participatory research on the efficacy of community action for conservation;
2. Communicating information through traditional events and innovative venues (e.g. citizen journalism, photo-stories, video and new forms of social media); and
3. Engaging in advocacy and action to ensure the good governance and effective management of their indigenous conserved territories and community conserved areas (ICCAs).