Limited room For manoeuvre - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 266

UNDP 2010; Rieckmann et al. 2011) and major water drainage basins of the
region. Some of these overlap with indigenous territorial rights (Bebbington
2012).
In some of these situations, as in the Bagua of Perú and in the case of El
Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro-Secure (TIPNIS) of the Bolivian
Andes, major conflicts between indigenous peoples and the government have
divided indigenous groups. (In both cases, the governments have had to review
their positions and respond to international criticisms.) Such situations increase
the vulnerability of indigenous peoples, both because of the conflict and because
they decrease land security. In the tropical forests of the Colombian Amazon,
the profound effects of climate change are exacerbated by deforestation and
forest fragmentation. Indigenous peoples find their livelihoods and options for
responding to climate change and variability profoundly affected by extensive
cattle ranching, agro-industrial palms and illegal coca plantations. This
movement has been spurred by political violence, prompting people to leave
violent areas, and by the appetite for land on which to grow industrial and/or
illegal crops.
In principle, indigenous peoples have the right to fully participate in decisions
affecting their livelihood. However, in practice, the extraction of natural and
mineral resources, as well as the over-exploitation of grazing, water, land and
other natural resources, is intimately linked to international and national
political and commercial dynamics that are beyond the reach of the peoples
described here. Decisions made at the highest levels of international policy
and the political economy carry the potential to resolve long-term sustainable
development issues for poverty-ridden regions; however, recent studies show
that this is rarely the case. Instead, the presence of extractive industries seems
to make local communities 'more polarized, more uncertain, more worried,
and still poor' (Bebbington 2012:225; see also Bourgouin 2011). This is
'development as usual' at its worst.
Indigenous rights-based development
Indigenous peoples are not necessarily in principle opposed to extractive
industries. There are many cases of their active engagement in mining or other
extractive activities, or willingness to negotiate ways in which these can take place
while still securing the long-term social, cultural and environmental conditions
for sustained indigenous livelihoods. However, this is possible only when there is
real consultation, capacity building and institutional strengthening of the parties
involved - including local and national institutions and their civil servants - and
with the full participation of indigenous peoples in decision-making processes.
This is emphasized in the principles of indigenous rights, which also embody
a deep recognition of communal rights to land and resources. An approach
that adheres to these internationally agreed-upon principles, and addresses
the structural causes of poverty and vulnerability, would allow the possibility