Parallel Worlds: A Sideways Approach to Promoting Indigenous - Ionindigenous Trade and Sustainable Development
21 Pages Posted: 5 Oct 2007 Last revised: 4 Jan 2011
Date Written: October 4, 2007
Abstract
What can be done in future trade negotiations to facilitate sustainable development? And how can indigenous peoples become a vital part of such negotiations? Given that the United Nations General Assembly has finally adopted the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, these questions become particularly acute. This article attempts to answer both questions by examining the openings in pre-Declaration international economic law for indigenous forms of sustainable development. It outlines some of the more crucial capacity-building that indigenous peoples and their allies will need as well as discusses the importance of indigenous peoples themselves recreating their own strong legal interpretative communities in the face of over-reliance on the market economy and consumerism in surrounding societies. It concludes with a summary of the most important steps that indigenous peoples will need to make to implement their own global economy as well as how to confront the resistance that they may expect from some powerful sectors within settler society.
Keywords: indigenous, trade, economic, sustainable, development
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