In many nations, there remain sufficiently extensive rural and wild areas that indigenous people still dwell within, often as they have done for untold thousands of years. It is almost never the case that these people also govern the state or nation.

They are almost always a minority, often a hidden minority that escapes the notice of the majority under normal circumstances. They are also almost always in the bottom echelons of a nation's economy -not necessarily because they would consider themselves poor -but because they do not extensively enter the market economy. For most indigenous people, it is no longer possible to sustain themselves without being at least marginally part of the market economy and without confronting the complexities of interdependent development.

Governments must decide how to manage natural resources that are contained within areas inhabited by indigenous people, and also how to govern the people as part of the market economy. Most governing bodies have what might be termed evolving policies in this regard. Exploitation of forest products, minerals, or aquatic resources, has inevitable significant impacts on indigenous people. The governing body must therefore decide how to manage the interrelationships between the indigenous people, the resources that are contained within the lands they occupy, and the market forces driving projects to extract the resources at the lowest possible cost.

There are emerging international standards by which all governments are judged in their governance of indigenous people. These standards attempt to find a comfortable balance between the needs of their citizens -whether indigenous or not -and the pressure to exploit natural resources at the lowest possible cost for the global village.

Government Guideline #1:
Establish Sustainability Policies for Natural Resources and Indigenous People.
Consistent with the national goal of ensuring the longevity and prosperity of the nation, specific policies to keep the nation's natural resources available over the very long-term should be a high priority. There are essentially three types of resource management: 1) non-renewable, 2) wild renewable, and 3) domesticated renewable.

Set Policies to Rationalize the Exploitation of Non-Renewable Resources
Mineral resources are finite and non-renewable. If they are sold as raw products, there is no value added to the national industrial capacity. Thus, extracting these when there is no immediate need to build the minerals into the technological capacity of the nation, must be based on a real and immediate need for the cash resources that result from selling your natural capital. Forest products can be managed in the same way - as a one-time exploitative project. Typically in this style of management, the forest is cut down, the forest products sold, and the land transformed to some other use such as urban development. In some projects of transformation, the forest is burned to make way for agricultural use. These two approaches do not allow regeneration of the forest.

Set Policies on the Basis of Sustainability for Renewable Resources
Forests can be managed as a renewable resource. Managed this way, the indigenous people within them are able to sustain their traditional way of life. For the long-term health of the planet, as much of the forests as possible should be managed and harvested as renewable resources. There are many forest extraction processes that are not successful - clear cutting in boreal forests can eliminate the forest under certain conditions. Clear cutting in certain tropical forests results in lateritic soils that not only cannot support regeneration of the forest, but also cannot support agriculture. Forests can be systematically harvested forever on an ecosystem basis (there is a vast literature on how to do this sustainably). In other schemes, the forest ecosystem is destroyed, but replaced by a monoculture of trees in reforestation. This is less desirable from the perspective of the planet's health, and ultimately the biodiversity of the world will not be able to sustain a completely domesticated series of tree farms that replace natural forests. Tree farms are, however, often more productive for timber over the medium-term than ecosystem managed forests. Over the long-term, tree farms suffer soil depletion; timber productivity then falls to a level that is less than full ecosystem-managed forests.

Living wild resources, whether terrestrial or aquatic, can all be managed sustainably if sufficient knowledge and political will supports the management policies and regulations. So far, the record is not good in aquatic resources - most world fisheries for wild stocks are over-harvested. The number of wild terrestrial stocks that are now harvested on a commercial basis is very limited. Most wild terrestrial stocks are harvested by indigenous people, and managed by them in a manner that goes back at least centuries, perhaps thousands of years. The advent of modern weaponry and transportation systems, as well as the sharp increase in populations of indigenous people who enter in any significant manner into the market economy, has placed even wild terrestrial stocks managed by indigenous people in significant danger of over-exploitation.

Set Policies on the Basis of Sustainability of Quality of Life for Indigenous Peoples
Within the projects to extract natural resources, interaction with indigenous people is inevitable. Developing policies that encourage the participation of these people in the development, management, and economic base that results from these projects avoids unsolvable confrontations. These same policies need to work on the principle that indigenous people have rights to live and use their traditional resources. Governments need to assist their indigenous people by combining the traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge in cooperative ventures to help everyone understand the population dynamics of wild stocks under natural indigenous management styles, during the transformation toward market-economy-based management, and then under full market-economy-based management.

Government Guideline #2:
Develop Strategies by Involving All Stakeholders
Good Strategies Are Based on the Needs of All Peoples
Strategic development is very nation specific, and must acknowledge the cultural backdrop of the country. That said, international experience has shown that strategies for implementing policies are essential elements of good management. Strategies for sustainability should discover ways and means of developing resources without diminishing the resource. To be effective, the process of developing these strategies should include the many stakeholders, shareholders, and special interest groups in meaningful consultation. Meaningless consultation may sometimes lead to increased short-term profitability, but sustainable development must be based on the considered needs of all parties. Good strategies are not the result of votes, or polls, or the lowest common denominator of a group of self-interested entrepreneurs. Good strategies are carefully designed to achieve sustainability while respecting the values and needs of the people.

Multi-Stakeholder Negotiations Work in Many Countries
A large body of literature is developing world-wide on multi-stakeholder or round-table negotiating techniques, with case-histories to demonstrate the value of the end results. The most direct route to locate examples of these agreements is through non-governmental organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund and the IUCN. Currently the most successful examples of these are in Canada, the United States, and Australia. To get access to this material, make direct contact with the regulatory agencies in each country that govern natural resources, but especially the forest and mining sectors, and to a limited degree the fishing sector.

Government Guideline #3:
Separate Government Agencies That Exploit from Those That Regulate
Regulatory Agencies Should Not Have an Inherent Conflict of Interest
Strategic development is achieved through programmes and projects. Multi-stakeholder and round-table advisory groups can assist in supplying the knowledge base to ensure the success of such programmes and projects and consequently the strategies themselves. Creating a suitable infrastructure to monitor and enforce these policies and strategies is a crucial part of ensuring that the practice remains true to the goal of sustainability.

It is of utmost importance to maintaining an agency's integrity that monitoring, regulatory, and enforcement agencies do not also have responsibility for the exploitation of the resources. Government policy should be separate from government programmes. When agencies are responsible for both harvest and regulation, the goals become confused. If both functions are combined in one agency, typically the agency emphasizes harvest, and sustainable practices are sacrificed to increased productivity

Manage Access to Isolated Indigenous People to Maintain Their Social, Cultural, and Physical Health
Establish policies on access to indigenous people by non-indigenous people as a safeguard against health and social damage. Even today, projects can decimate indigenous communities through the importation of diseases, or by introducing foods so unfamiliar that they cause digestive problems and malnutrition. The sudden introduction of non-indigenous people can be destructive to the social fabric of an indigenous community. Sensitive policies can minimize the damage.

Research the Socioeconomic Background of the Community Before Making Contact
The following checklist is a helpful guide to information that is needed before a programme of public consultation begins with indigenous communities:

• If the community is affiliated with other organizations, what is the purpose, membership, and history of these organizations?
• Is there a political, historical, or social tie between this community and others?
• What significant changes to the social, cultural, economic, political, or environmental conditions of the community have taken place recently or even not-so-recently?
• What experience or participation has this community had with development projects or agencies?
• Has this community ever participated in a consultative process? If so, was it successful?
• Who are the community leaders? Whom do they represent?
• Has there been a recent change in the community leadership; if so why?
• Is the community divided in its allegiance to the leaders, i.e. will you be dealing with more than one faction?
• What are the political systems within the community? How are they allied to external political systems? Does the community in general approve?
• What are the respective roles of elders, men, women, and youth within the community?
• Who is most knowledgeable about the community's biophysical, socioeconomic, and spiritual resources?

The following questions are useful guides to evaluating the effectiveness of a regulatory agency that may be overseeing development planning processes:

• What is the history of the regulatory agency responsible for this project? Has the process changed recently - if so why? Was the process reliable for indigenous people? Did the agency follow through on its committments?
• What legislation or policies does the agency use? Are the legislation or policies under revision?
• What resources do regulatory agencies offer to the indigenous community? What resources can the indigenous community offer to the agency to help the process?
• What techniques are used to involve the public, and when are they be used?

Government Guideline #4:
Enforce the Traditional Resource Rights of Indigenous People
Be Aware of Relevant International Statues and Conventions
There are many international conventions, laws, and declarations that govern the traditional rights to resources that indigenous people have or should have. Use these as a guide to the manner in which the people are treated in your country. The following are a selected list of the most important such sources of information:

• Convention on Biological Diversity
• UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and Desertification, Particularly in Africa
• UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
• UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
• UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime Of Genocide
• UN Draft Declaration of Principles on Human Rights and the Environment
• UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
• UN Declaration on the Human Right to Development
• Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development
• International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources
• Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles of Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests
• UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
• UN International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
• International Labour Organization Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal People in Independent Countries
• Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations
• Rio Declaration
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property
• Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore
• Declaration on the Principles of International Cultural Cooperation
• Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage
• Model Provisions for National Laws on Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions
• UN Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action

In the long run, the world will need to adjust to the growing interest in individual rights. Governments set the legal limits on human rights, and corporations need to live within these limits. But it is never a bad thing to err on the side of excellence in caring for the human beings who live in local communities. Corporations and governments gain immensely in stature from managing these situations humanely. Increasingly, indigenous people are recognized as having traditional rights to resources. Disregarding these rights can lead to protracted legal battles that are very costly.

Government Guideline #5:
Fund Capacity-Building Amongst Your Nation's Indigenous People
Building the skills needed to cope
with market-based economies and modern technology is an effective way of bringing indigenous people into the governing regime of any country, while enhancing the financial base of the indigenous people. This needs to be done with a sensitivity to their cultural background. Traditional knowledge does not need to be replaced or eliminated for indigenous people to enter a market-based economy. Parts of it can be transformed into products and services that are needed or desired by non-indigenous societies. It is most important to indigenous people to ensure that when changes take place, people are able to go on living and developing themselves according to their own decisions and traditions, while at the same time being a meaningful part of the emerging nation and its economy.