A/42/427
English
Page 120
76. Protection of traditional rights should be accompanied by positive measures to enhance the well-being of the community in ways appropriate to the group's life-style. For example, earnings from traditional activities can be increased through the introduction of marketing arrangements that ensure a fair price for produce. but also through steps to conserve and enhance the resource base and increase resource productivity.
77. Those Promoting policies that have an impact on the lives of an isolated, traditional people must tread a fine line between keeping them in artificial, perhaps unwanted isolation and wantonly destroying their life-styles. Hence broader measures of human resource development are essential. Health facilities must be provided to supplement and improve traditional practices: nutritional deficiencies have to be corrected, and educational institutions established. These steps should precede new projects that open up an area to economic development. Special efforts should also be made to ensure that the local community can derive the full benefit of such projects, particularly through jobs.
78. In terms of sheer numbers, these isolated, vulnerable groups are small. But their marginalization is a symptom of a style of development that tends to neglect both human and environmental considerations. Hence a more careful and sensitive consideration of their interests is a touchstone of a sustainable development policy.
Footnotes
| 1/ | Department of International Economic and Social Affairs (DIESA). World Population Prospects: Estimates and Projections as Assessed in 1984 (New York: United Nations, 1986). |
| 2/ | Ibid. |
| 3/ | Based on data from UNCTAD, Handbook of International Trade and Development Statistics 1985 Supplement (New York: 1985). |
| 4/ | World Bank, World Development Report 1984 (New York: Oxford University Press. 1984), |
| 5/ | Ibid. |
| 6/ | DIESA, op. cit. |
| 7/ | UN. Population Bulletin of the United Nations. No. 14. 1982 (New York: 1983). |
