Dario Novellino

Joined 2 years ago / Italy, UK, Philippines

ONGOING PROJECTS

Dario Novellino currently holds a Christensen Fund (TCF) grant on “Linking Networks on Pastoralism and Mobile Production Systems”. The project’s primary aim is to build solidarity and organize cross-visits and audiovisual exchanges between representatives of mobile indigenous communities on issues related to the maintenance of agriculture, hunting/gathering and pastoralists traditions, with special focus on traditional varieties of crops and animal breeds. Through these exchanges, the visions and views of ‘traditional stewards’ will be brought, not only to the attention of policy makers, conservation and development organizations, but will be circulated, as well, in the form of audio-visual statements and story telling amongst other communities around the globe. As of now, the project has facilitated the establishment of solidarity links between the indigenous communities of Palawan (the Philippines) and those of Madre de Dios (Peru) who have resisted and are resisting mining for more than two decades. The establishment of this linkage took place right at the time when indigenous peoples of the Amazonian Peru had began various forms of open resistance against hydrocarbon extraction in their traditional territories. The solidarity link between the IPs of Peru and Palawan is being consolidated through the collaboration of the Ancestral Land/Domain Watch (ALDAW), the Peoples and Plants International (PPI) and, specifically, through the personal efforts of Dr. Miguel Alexiades (CBCD staff and PPI co-director). Such exchange promotes the sharing of experiences as a way of 1) fostering reflection and joint actions through the establishment of strategic alliances; and 2) addressing common problems regarding indigenous links, rights and claims over ancestral homelands and cultural landscapes. The envisaged goal is to enable the production of jointly produced video materials that could be used to exert pressure at a national and international policy level.

COMPLETED PROJECTS

Recently, Dario has completed both the RAI (Royal Anthropological Institute) fellowship in 'urgent anthropology', and a grant from the Global Biocultural Initiative Program of the Christensen Fund (TCF). His project for the RAI, "Enabling the 'Indigenous Voice': beyond technocratic solutions to forest conservation on Palawan Island (the Philippines)" has interfaced with his TCF project, "Developing local global feedback for policy advocacy on biocultural diversity", and both projects have ended in 2009. In addition to his longstanding interest in Palawan and Southeast Asia, Dario continues to investigate the living traditions of the rural population (particularly the shepherds) of the Aurunci Mountains of central Italy, where he is based.

OTHER RECENT RESEARCH

In 2005 he completed a Wenner-Gren funded research project "Assessing the Dynamics of Local Knowledge Hybridization in the Context of Conservation Development Projects in Palawan (the Philippines)". In 2004 and 2005 he worked with colleagues on a ESRC funded project on anthropological methodologies and transmission of environmental knowledge.

BACKGROUND

Dario received a Masters in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) in 1995, and a doctorate in environmental anthropology from the University of Kent. His dissertation research, Shamanism and Everyday Life. An Account of Personhood, Identity and Bodily Knowledge explores the perceived relationship between self and world and the dialectic of knowledge and bodily praxis amongst the Batak of Palawan, a vanishing society of hunter-gatherers and horticulturists in the Philippines.

Before his academic training, Dario Novellino worked as a free-lance photo-journalist publishing extensively on national and international magazines in the field of indigenous rights and environmental destruction. His first mission brought him to the Arctic where he lived for several months with a community of Inuit in the North West Territory (Canada). He has also published a book for Sperling & Kupfer editors and has co-authored an illustrated volume on threatened ethnic groups for Erizzo publishers, in Italy.

Since 1986, South East Asia has become the focus of his activities, and he has spent time with various indigenous communities such as the Hanunóo of Mindoro, the Bonei, Sakai and Minang Kabaw of Sumatra, the Ot Danum of Kalimantan, the Penan of Sarawak, the Batek of Peninsular Malaysia, the H'mong, Dzao, Gia-rai and Ba-na of Vietnam, and the Lisu of Northern Thailand. However, most of his anthropological research has been carried out in the Philippines where he has spent a total period of seven years with the Batak and Pälawan communities focussing on ethnobotany, local perceptions of the environment, rock art and technology, natural resources management, dynamics of change, conservation and indigenous rights.

In co-ordination with Philippine NGOs and indigenous peoples’ organizations, he has promoted a number of initiatives for the recognition of indigenous ancestral domain claims. In 1992, he served as a special consultant for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Manila), and has been a long-term Visiting Research Associate of the Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC) of the Ateneo de Manila University. He is also responsible for setting up the South East Asia section of the first Paleo-Ethnobotanic Museum in Italy, at the University "Federico II" of Naples (ortobotanico.unina.it/Museo/Museo.htm)

Over the past years he has held positions as national councillor of the Friends of the Earth-Italy and consultant for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) of the United Nations, working in Indonesia and Northern Vietnam. In 1995 he was hired by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to produce a paper on 'social capital', which was published in 1997. In 1999, in co-ordination with the UK based Forest Peoples Programme, he has compiled a study on the impact of road construction and on the status of coastal resources in southern Palawan island.

Since 2005 he became increasingly disappointed and disenchanted with the strategic poverty-eradication approaches of UN institutions and, thus, decided to cease consultancy work for such agencies.

Aside from the research interests listed above, he continues to support indigenous communities in Palawan in asserting their ancestral land rights and in the implementation of small-scale livelihood initiatives. So far, such initiatives have included the re-introduction of local crop varieties, small livestock raising, the creation of revolving funds for harvesting and processing non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and legal assistance for ancestral land claims.