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Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve in Canada has "Healthy Foods-Healthy Communities" initiative, a multi-year project begun in 2009, which builds local knowledge and capacity around food security, food access, food cost issues, nutrition awareness, traditional diets analysis, and understanding of marine and forest gardening production potential. They have completed a regional food survey, looking at social, economic, cultural and environmental issues affecting food security, and developed a regional food action plan and network, which includes food retailers, farmers, social service groups, local government officials and interested individuals. The resulting action plan is an excellent model that could be followed in many other biosphere reserves. Four of the five First Nation Communities have committed to community gardens and there is now a Tofino Community Food Initiative. Traditional food kits for demonstration projects have been produced, as well as a video addressing food security challenges in the region.

Our strategy at Doreo, builds on the core philosophy of the pioneer of modern Venture Capital, General Georges Doriot, to help great people build great companies. As Venture Capital partners we identify visionary entrepreneurs and work side by side to create great companies by bringing to bear deep sector expertise, strategic guidance, access to capital and operational excellence. At Doreo we have structured our investment approach and organization to provide entrepreneurs and their teams with access to the combined resources of the entire firm and our advisors.

The Kafa and Yayu Biosphere Reserves of Ethiopia contain important Afromontane forests and biologically rich areas, some of which are threatened and contain the centers of diversity for Coffea Arabica. The Yayu forest has the greatest abundance of wild Aribica coffee anywhere. Sustainable development activities in these reserves focus on public-private partnerships for economic growth, particularly for sustainable coffee production, including planting of fruit trees for crop production and to provide shade for coffee.

The Land Institute has worked for over 30 years on the problem of agriculture. Our purpose is to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. We have researched, published in refereed scientific journals, given hundreds of public presentations here and abroad, and hosted countless intellectuals and scientists. Our work is frequently cited, most recently in Science and Nature, the most prestigious scientific journals. We are now assembling a team of advisors which includes members of the National Academy of Sciences. These scientists understand our work and stand ready to endorse the feasibility of what we have come to call Natural Systems Agriculture.

Our strategy now is to collaborate with public institutions in order to direct more research in the direction of Natural Systems Agriculture. We are seeking funds to construct and operate a research center devoted to Natural Systems Agriculture and to underwrite scientists elsewhere who will engage with us in such research. We estimate the research cost to be $5 million a year for 25 years, which is a small fraction of one percent of the nation's annual agricultural research investment.

Important questions have been answered and crucial principles explored to the point that we feel comfortable in saying that we have demonstrated the scientific feasibility of our proposal for a Natural Systems Agriculture. Because this work deals with basic biological questions and principles, the implications are applicable worldwide. If Natural Systems Agriculture were fully adopted, we could one day see the end of agricultural scientists from industrialized societies delivering agronomic methods and technologies from their fossil fuel-intensive infrastructures into developing countries and thereby saddling them with brittle economies.

Rhön Biosphere Reserve, one of Germany’s 14 biosphere reserves, has successful programs in conservation, utilization and marketing of a variety of local products including the native Rhön sheep, more than 170 different apple varieties, organic beef and dairy products, trout, and caraway seeds. The sheep are now marketed to local restaurants and there is an annual sheep festival. An apple initiative has raised money to carry out research on regional apple varieties, which are used for eating, juice, apple bear, schnapps, vinegar, and chips. These activities have benefitted local communities by securing jobs and creating new jobs (small scale), conservation of food genetic resources, and protection of wildlife habitats.

The Sierra De Manantlan Unesco Biosphere in Mexico is a tropical forest and grassland biosphere reserve area, which includes communities engaged mainly in agriculture (corn, beans, tomatoes, sugarcane, watermelon, mangoes), livestock grazing, timber production and extraction of wood for fuel and mining of coal and minerals. Living conditions are poor and marginal, so the biosphere reserve addresses the dual challenge of improving the livelihood of people and conserving wild relatives of important crops such as Zea diploperennis, populations of several races of maize traditional for this area, and wild forms of the runner bean, Phaseolus coccineus.

Survival is the only international organization supporting tribal peoples worldwide. We were founded in 1969 after an article by Norman Lewis in the UK’s Sunday Times highlighted the massacres, land thefts and genocide taking place in Brazilian Amazonia. Like many modern atrocities, the racist oppression of Brazil’s Indians took place in the name of ‘economic growth’.

Today, Survival has supporters in 82 countries. We work for tribal peoples’ rights in three complementary ways: education, advocacy and campaigns. We also offer tribal people themselves a platform to address the world. We work closely with local indigenous organizations, and focus on tribal peoples who have the most to lose, usually those most recently in contact with the outside world.

We believe that public opinion is the most effective force for change. Its power will make it harder, and eventually impossible, for governments and companies to oppress tribal peoples.

Survival’s education work

Our educational programmes aimed at people in the ‘west’ or ‘north’ set out to demolish the myth that tribal peoples are relics, destined to perish through ‘progress’. We promote respect for their cultures and explain the contemporary relevance of their way of life.

Survival’s educational work takes various forms, both inside and outside schools, for children and for adults. We provide free educational materials for teachers and students, and inform the interested general public through, books, conferences, photographic exhibitions and so on.

Visit Survival’s bookshop and order our free education pack.

Survival advocacy

We provide a platform for tribal representatives to talk directly to the companies which are invading their land. We also disseminate information to tribal peoples, using both community radio and the written word – telling them how other tribes are faring and warning them about the threats posed by multinationals. In this way, we give them access to the information they need to make their voices heard.

Survival also plays a major role in ensuring that humanitarian, self-help, educational and medical projects with tribal peoples receive proper funding. A good example is the Yanomami medical fund, which succeeded in virtually eliminating malaria in some Indian areas.

Survival campaigns

Survival runs worldwide campaigns to fight for tribal peoples. We were the first in this field to use mass letter-writing, and have orchestrated campaigns from Siberia to Sarawak, Canada to Kenya. In 2000, for instance, the Indian government abandoned their plan to relocate the isolated Jarawa tribe, after receiving 150-200 letters a day from Survival supporters around the world. Shortly before that, the governor of western Siberia imposed a five year ban on oil drilling in the territory of the Yugan Khanty within weeks of Survival issuing a bulletin. There have been many other successes.

Our campaigns are not only directed at governments, but at companies, banks, extremist missionaries, guerrilla armies, narrow minded conservationists or anyone else who violates tribal peoples’ rights. Survival was the first organization to draw attention to the destructive effects of World Bank projects – now recognized as a major cause of suffering in many poor countries. As well as letter-writing – which generates thousands of protests – we use many other tactics: from vigils at embassies, to direct lobbying of those in positions of power; from putting cases at the United Nations, to advising on the drafting of international law; from informing tribes of their legal rights, to organising headline-grabbing stunts. All our work is rooted in direct personal contact with hundreds of tribal communities.

How is Survival unique?

Survival is the largest organization, and one of the oldest, working for tribal peoples’ rights. It is also the only one which makes use of public opinion and public action to secure long-term improvement for tribal peoples. It is the only major organization in its field which refuses funding from national governments and depends on the public for its support – this ensures our freedom of action but also makes us stretch our scarce resources to the limit. Survival materials are published in many different languages throughout the world. Survival is a registered charity in Britain, with 501(c)(3) status in the US and the equivalent in France, Italy and Spain. We can also receive tax-free donations in the Netherlands.

Survival is the only international pro-tribal peoples organization to have received the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, known as the ‘alternative Nobel Prize’, as well as the Spanish ‘Premio Léon Felipe’ and the Italian ‘Medaglia della Presidenza della Camera dei Deputati’. Most importantly, our work has been applauded by countless tribal peoples and their organizations throughout the world.

What does the future hold?

Since 1969, the ‘developed’ world’s attitude to tribal peoples has changed beyond recognition. Then, it was assumed that they would either die out or be assimilated; now, at least in some places, their experience and values are considered important. Survival has pushed tribal issues into the political and cultural mainstream. This, perhaps, is our greatest achievement of all, but there are many barriers of racism, tyranny and greed which we must still overcome.