Survival International, which helps tribal peoples protect their land, created a satirical cartoon book that skewers the development community. Among the targets are those private sector partnerships which are nothing more than thinly veiled attempts to take land and resources away from tribal peoples.
It's true that well-intentioned development projects sometimes have disastrous consequences. Large infrastructure projects, such as dams, are not entirely innocent against charges of destroying traditional livelihoods and disrupting communities. It's crucial that the legal community work to protect land and other rights of indigenous people.
And yet...globalization is an unstoppable force, and it's naive to suppose that even the most isolated group can avoid its currents. To me, the question isn't whether the development community should interact with tribal peoples, but how it will do so. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) explores these issues in a 2004 book, In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization (you can read one or all of the chapters online).
Via Curious.
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