- On Dec. 16, IPBES, the U.N.’s biodiversity policy panel, released a report on transformative change to address the biodiversity crisis, which centers the role of Indigenous and local knowledge and rights.
- The report identifies the three underlying causes of biodiversity loss and concludes with four principles to guide the change, five strategies to advance the change, six broad approaches, and five challenges this change faces.
- Many Indigenous and local traditional knowledge systems can offer insights into fostering human-nature interconnection and provide cost-effective strategies in conserving high-value areas for nature when they’re included in conservation strategies.
- With only six years left to achieve the 2030 global biodiversity goals, nature conservation faces many challenges, but the authors say they believe transformative change is still possible.
Indigenous and local knowledge systems’ ability to nurture human-nature interconnection can play an important role in creating the type of transformative change needed to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, according to a new report published Dec. 16 by the U.N.’s biodiversity policy panel.
Prepared by more than 100 experts from 42 countries working under the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the report outlines strategies for this transformative change to meet the upcoming global biodiversity goals and the 2050 vision for living in harmony with nature.
It defines transformative change as “fundamental system-wide shifts in views — ways of thinking, knowing and seeing; structures — ways of organizing, regulating and governing; and practices — ways of doing, behaving and relating,” according to an IPBES press release.
The report identifies three underlying causes of the biodiversity crisis: the disconnection from nature, inequitable power and wealth distribution, and the prioritization of short-term gains. Karen O’Brien, co-chair of the assessment and a sociology professor at the University of Oslo, said these issues have led to destructive views and behaviors that exacerbate biodiversity loss, including the risk of irreversible tipping points that threaten ecological systems.
Many knowledge systems, including Indigenous and local knowledge, often “provide complementary insights into how [transformative change] occurs and how to promote, accelerate and navigate the change needed for a just and sustainable world,” O’Brien in the release.
The report concluded with four principles to guide the change, five strategies to advance it, six broad approaches, and five challenges this change faces. Five core themes emerged across the 881 visions of transformative change the authors assessed.
“The diversity of societies, economies, cultures and peoples means that no single theory or approach provides a complete understanding of transformative change or how to achieve it,” O’Brien said.
Indigenous peoples and local communities, who have tenure rights to about 40% of protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes across 87 countries, have important roles in conservation processes and transformative change, the report says. This isn’t only in the use of their traditional ecological knowledge and values, say the authors, but also their equitable participation and inclusion in conservation efforts taking place on their lands.
Five strategies for transformative change
The first strategy emphasizes conserving areas of high value for people and nature using sustainable stewardship that includes communities and Indigenous rights. Targeting high-value areas already stewarded by Indigenous communities is a cost-effective method for long-term sustainability, the report says.
“Science shows that our lands often house more species and have lower rates of deforestation and degradation than lands managed by public or private entities, and can be far less costly to protect,” said Dinamam Tuxá of the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). In Brazil, studies show that Indigenous land rights are key to land restoration and curbing deforestation.
The second strategy calls for systemic changes in sectors like agriculture, fisheries and mining to curb biodiversity loss. These includes stricter regulations, nature-based solutions, and sustainable farming, with Indigenous communities involved in planning for effective conservation. Eliminating, phasing out or reforming subsidies harmful to nature also play a role, according to the report.
The third strategy promotes prioritizing nature and social equity over private interests by transforming economic and financial systems — and even metrics of success. The includes reducing consumption and production patterns, reforming harmful subsidies, introducing taxes on pollution, and supporting the not-for-profit sector. These actions aim to address the significant funding gap in biodiversity conservation.
“Bankers insist on conditions to guarantee their investments when they lend money to our governments. In our countries, we too must insist on conditions — those that ensure investments do not harm our way of life, our pristine landscapes, and our waterways,” said Kleber Karipuna, of APIB.
The fourth strategy highlights inclusive governance to combat corruption and the dominance of powerful interest groups, the latter of which tend to give low priority to nature-related values represented by Indigenous peoples and local communities. One study shows that governance reforms, like including Indigenous and local community rights or roles in managing forests, can support both human and environmental goals in tropical forested landscapes.
“We face powerful economic and political forces that seek to invade our lands and destroy our way of life. So, for this quest to save biodiversity to be effective, our rights must be respected,” Karipuna said.
The fifth strategy focuses on strengthening the human-nature connection through worldviews that emphasize care and harmony with nature. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge and ecosystem-based approaches into educational curricula will help foster deeper understanding and support sustainable conservation practices.
Prioritizing human-nature connection through promoting worldviews and values that emphasize care, reciprocity and harmony with nature is outlined in the fifth strategy. “These worldviews include those associated with Indigenous and local knowledge systems,” the IPBES report says.
The authors suggest integrating biodiversity, its loss, nature’s contributions, ecosystem-based approaches, and Indigenous knowledge into educational curricula for better conservation decision-making.
Visions of change
The authors assessed 881 visions of change that fit into five themes: regenerative and circular economies, community rights and empowerment, biodiversity and ecosystem health, spiritual reconnection for behavioral change, and innovative business and technology.
Visions for living in harmony with nature are more likely to succeed when the communities are part of inclusive, rights-based approaches and stakeholder processes and incorporate collaboration for change across sectors, the report says.
Monica Ndoen, from the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), Indonesia’s biggest Indigenous rights coalition, said governments need to respect and support Indigenous peoples’ initiatives given that they manage or have tenure rights over a quarter of Earth’s land and intersect with 40% of protected areas and ecologically intact surfaces.
“And yet, as the report suggests, our political leaders continue to favor industry and agriculture, while failing to enforce or recognize our rights,” Monica said.
According to Tim Forsyth, a professor of environment and development at the London School of Economics and Political Science, studies show we have much to learn from Indigenous peoples’ traditional ecological knowledge and their conservation of ecosystems, but many of these cultures are changing with the younger generations. Some communities also actively take part in activities that destroy biodiversity.
In the Amazon, Indigenous youths have been lured into mining activities that promise new modern lifestyles at the cost of environmental damage. Studies show that forest communities can drive forest loss to meet their basic needs when poverty and demand for natural resources increase. Forsyth warns that assumptions about Indigenous peoples that are too narrow and essentialist about their relationship with nature can reduce attention to their rights to only serve an agenda of protecting biodiversity.
‘Change is possible’
The IPBES report authors say the road map to achieving transformative change comes at the cost of tackling major challenges. The five obstacles to transformative change are domination over nature and people, economic and political inequalities, inadequate policies and unfit institutions, unsustainable consumption and production patterns, and limited access to clean technologies and innovation systems.
“The impacts of actions and resources devoted to blocking transformative change, for example through lobbying by vested interest groups or corruption currently overshadow those devoted to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity,” O’Brien said in the statement.
There’s also a “mismatch” between the scale of biodiversity challenges and the possible speed of institutional implementation. Institutions that can drive change or be changed can often be siloed from one another, and elections can take time or bring in figures opposed to transformative change. Efforts by civil society, the report says, can help speed up the process.
There’s only six years remaining to meet the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework goals by 2030 and to achieve the 2050 vision for biodiversity, but experts say it’s possible to achieve transformative change.
“Acting decisively now to shift views, structures and practices to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss will be tremendously challenging,” Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the IPBES, said in the statement, “but is urgent, necessary and possible.”
Banner image: A tiger-legged monkey tree frog (Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis) in the Amazon. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Do Indigenous peoples really conserve 80% of the world’s biodiversity?
Citations:
Baragwanath, K., Bayi, E., & Shinde, N. (2023). Collective property rights lead to secondary forest growth in the Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(22). doi:10.1073/pnas.2221346120
Fischer, H. W., Chhatre, A., Duddu, A., Pradhan, N., & Agrawal, A. (2023). Community forest governance and synergies among carbon, biodiversity and livelihoods. Nature Climate Change, 13(12), 1340-1347. doi:10.1038/s41558-023-01863-6
Garnett, S. T., Burgess, N. D., Fa, J. E., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Molnár, Z., Robinson, C. J., … Leiper, I. (2018). A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation. Nature Sustainability, 1(7), 369-374. doi:10.1038/s41893-018-0100-6
Francesconi, W., Vanegas-Cubillos, M., & Bax, V. (2022). Carbon footprints of forest degradation and deforestation by “basic-needs populations”: A review. Carbon Footprints, 1(2), 10. doi:10.20517/cf.2022.10
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