For centuries, Indigenous Peoples across the globe have been living in harmony with nature. To this day, they are custodians of much of the world’s remaining biodiversity, utilizing practices that have been passed down generations and woven into their relationships with the land. This International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, we recognize their role as stewards of biodiversity, and reflect on some of our work with Indigenous communities. 

It is important to recognize that Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) is the foundation of many positive ecological practices. For example, Aboriginal peoples in Northern Australia have a rich history of creating controlled fires to help manage their landscapes – fires that support habitats and regulate local climates. However, European settlers displaced many Aboriginal peoples from their land and outlawed these fire management systems. This disruption allowed dry grasses and other vegetation to accumulate, contributing to larger and hotter late-season wildfires that damaged habitats and released greater quantities of greenhouse gases. This example is one of many that highlights the importance of recognizing and including ILK in conservation. 

ILK and data justice 

Data justice provides a framework for recognizing and appropriately including ILK in conservation data systems. Data are not neutral – decisions about what to measure, how to collect information and who gets to access it can marginalize Indigenous Peoples whose knowledge is often sidelined and invisible in mainstream datasets. Data justice seeks to ensure that all actors, including Indigenous Peoples, are made visible, represented and treated fairly in decision-making and in the conservation actions that are made based on the data.  

UNEP-WCMC's Protected Planet Initiative has been working to assess its datasets against data justice principles and take action in the aim of creating more just data processes. This includes addressing geographic biases, increasing representation of non-state actors and where relevant, requiring that data providers adhere to free, prior and informed consent processes when reporting data. The team also manages the ICCA Registry, a platform for data on territories and areas conserved by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, provided by the communities themselves. These data are captured in a variety of ways, from stories to statistics, and help to give visibility to the significance of these areas in global conservation. 

Working with Indigenous Peoples on ILK indicators  

Biodiversity indicators track changes in ecosystems over time. These include ILK indicators which measure how Indigenous rights, practices and knowledge systems contribute to biodiversity outcomes, and are used to monitor progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. As part of the Transformative Pathways project, UNEP-WCMC recently co-hosted the second Expert Workshop on Traditional Knowledge Indicators, involving over 30 experts from Indigenous and local organizations, technical agencies and governments from Kenya, Colombia, Philippines, Finland and Cameroon, to share progress and challenges with monitoring traditional knowledge indicators and to document real-world examples of how governments, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and other non-state actors are working together to monitor status and trends in ILK and biodiversity. 

A key theme that emerged during discussions was the positive impact that community biodiversity monitoring has on strengthening generational bonds. For example, in the Philippines, more Indigenous children are attending mainstream schools, leading them away from ILK systems. Including these young people into Indigenous land management planning can reconnect them to ILK, and their elders who pass this knowledge down. 

One of the indicators discussed during the workshop was the “percentage of the population in traditional occupations”. This indicator was put to use in the Philippines, where the Philippine Association for Intercultural Development used participatory mapping to work with Indigenous communities to map trends in the uptake of traditional livelihoods and use of Indigenous languages. These indicators are key as they can highlight where traditional livelihoods and knowledge systems contribute to positive biodiversity outcomes. Moreover, they shine a light on how Indigenous communities change over time, and whether these changes point to a need for a greater protection of rights to land and self-determination. For example, a decline in traditional livelihoods can be tied to limited land rights or biodiversity loss and may signal the need for enhanced policy protections. 

ILK in national ecosystem assessments 

National ecosystem assessments are nationally driven processes in which a country synthesizes its knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services and their links to people. 

The National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) Initiative, in partnership with the BES-Net Indigenous and Local Knowledge Support Unit led by UNESCO’s Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) programme, supports countries to effectively incorporate ILK in their national ecosystem assessments alongside scientific evidence. 

In practice, this means working directly with knowledge holders on the ground. When collecting data for Malawi’s National Ecosystem Assessment, the assessment team consulted with a diversity of ILK holders across the country to better understand their relationships with nature. This included a visit to the Khulubvi Sacred Rain Shrine in Nsanje, a sacred, spiritual site for the Mang’anja people – the community shared insights into some of their cultural practices that protect biodiversity, including bans on cutting down trees in respect to the forest. 

This International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, we reaffirm the enduring value of Indigenous knowledge systems and practices in safeguarding biodiversity for generations to come. 

Main image: SL-Photography, Adobe Stock #370282955