Migration and human resource deple- tion.

RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 121 other dimensions such as political freedom, the ability to participate in one’s community, self respect and so on will often remain inaccessible. UNDP 2008: iii. For many indigenous peoples, programs and projects aimed at propelling the economic growth of the countries they live in have brought about the very opposite of human develop- ment. These have deprived them of what they already had – i.e., water, food, medicine, clothing, shelter and the means by which to produce or gain access to such necessities. In most cases, the said programs and projects have also been implemented by denying indigenous peoples their political freedom, their civil liberties, their human rights.

4. The human rights-based approach to development

Increasingly, however, development institutions, such as the UNDP, and funders, such as the European Commission, have adopted a human rights-based approach to development. In rela- tion to indigenous peoples, this means the promotion of development with due regard for their rights – especially: • the right to self-determination, including • the right to define their own development concept or model, programs or plans and poli- cies; • the right to say yes or no to other plans that may affect them; • the right to land, territory and resources; • the right to their own economic, cultural and socio-political systems; • their basic civil liberties and human rights.

5. The concept of sustainable development

In textbook terms, economic growth means the production and consumption of increased amounts of goods and services. The production of consumption goods requires the investment of physical capital, the extraction of raw materials from nature, the use of intermediate materials processed by human hands and the expenditure of more human labor. In the market economy, profit from the production and sale of goods can be transformed into financial capital for further production and sale, and so on. Thus, economic growth both requires and results in the har- nessing of ever-increasing amounts of all sorts of resources in a process that is – theoretically – unending. The earth’s resources are, however, finite. Some resources are renewable – water, a colony of coral, a forest, plants and animals in the water and on land, humus, micro-organisms, etc. But they cannot be replenished if they are consumed at a rate that is faster than nature has time to regenerate them. And the organisms in an ecosystem are interdependent; some species of plants and animals cannot be made to thrive again if the other species they depended on have been decimated. It is possible for the earth to regenerate petroleum, coal, even minerals and humic acid. But this would take at least one geologic era – i.e., several hundred million years. In practi- cal terms, then, these resources are non-renewable. The capacity of human beings to endure exploitation is also finite. In earlier times, it was possible for one people or its ruling class to exploit other peoples and classes for generations. Since ancient times, however, human beings have so matured in consciousness of what is right and wrong, just and unjust, that no people or social class would bear continued exploitation by another people or class for even a single generation. Module-6