n emerging body of research suggests that traditional techniques, some millennia old, for growing food, controlling wildfires and conserving endangered species could help arrest the dramatic decline of the natural world
In the Peruvian city of Ayacucho, the indigenous Quechua people have a tradition known as chirapaq. As the red-orange glow of the setting sun gives way to a deep blue twilight, the Quechua look to the heavens in the hopes that two stars will collide to birth a sparkling, star-filled skyscape.
For some Quechua, the celestial renaissance is an allegory representing the hope that indigenous cultures around the world will return to prominence, in many cases after generations of repression.
There’s a growing realisation among environmental advocates that the spread of indigenous practices is also crucial to the planet’s future. An emerging body of research suggests that traditional techniques, some millennia old, for growing food, controlling wildfires and conserving endangered species could help arrest the dramatic decline of the natural world.
“We must preserve and strengthen indigenous practices, which contribute to sustainable environmental management and provide leadership in combating climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste,” says Siham Drissi, a Programme Management Officer with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
This year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, to be held on 9 August, is expected to cast a spotlight on the importance of traditional knowledge in environmental management and the role that indigenous women have in preserving indigenous culture.
The world’s indigenous population comprises some 476 million people living across 90 countries and representing 5,000 different cultures. They manage an estimated 25 per cent of Earth’s land mass, which accounts for 40 per cent of all ecologically intact landscapes.
Yet indigenous peoples are arguably among the world’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups due to systemic marginalisation. They’re almost three times as likely to live in extreme poverty than non-indigenous people, and they account for 15 per cent of the world’s poorest.
Despite that, in many parts of the world, indigenous communities are at the forefront of conservation, according to a 2021 report supported in part by UNEP. Many are specialists at living in fragile ecosystems and managing limited biodiversity.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, the Bambuti-Babuluko community is helping to protect one of Central Africa’s last remaining tracts of primary tropical forest. In Iran, the semi-nomadic Chahdegal Balouch oversee 580,000 hectares of fragile shrubland and desert. And in Canada’s far north, Inuit leaders are working to restore caribou herds, whose numbers had been in steep decline.
In areas like Australia and South America, indigenous land management, including slow-burning and purposefully set brush fires are considered key to preventing large-scale wildfires, which in many places could become more common as the climate becomes hotter and drier.
“Indigenous fire is about burning in a way that supports healthy culture, ecosystems and society,” says Oliver Costello, director of the Jagun Alliance Aboriginal Corporation in Australia. “More socio-political change and investment is required to properly implement indigenous fire and land management in Australia and beyond to realise the potential of indigenous custodianship and knowledge in practice.”
Tending to traditional knowledge
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007, requires all entities to obtain free, prior and informed consent from indigenous peoples before engaging in activities that impact their rights, survival, dignity and well-being. The declaration posits that interactions must occur on indigenous peoples’ time frames and in indigenous languages.
To that end, 2022 marks the start of the UN’s Decade of Indigenous Languages, which emphasises the importance of enabling indigenous languages in justice systems, the media, labour and health programmes. Given the importance of oral traditions in passing down environmental management practices and indigenous knowledge, experts say the preservation of language and customs is of the utmost importance.
At the resumed fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly earlier this year, Member States adopted a key resolution that focuses on deploying nature to find solutions for sustainable development [MRT1]. The resolution calls on UNEP to support the implementation of such solutions, which safeguard the rights of communities and indigenous peoples.
UNEP also has a policy that aims to protect environmental defenders through denouncing attacks, torture, intimidation and murder while advocating for better protection of environmental rights.
