Inside Climate News article - Q&A: To Save The Planet, Traditional Indigenous Knowledge Is Indispensable

Indigenous peoples’ ecological expertise honed over centuries is increasingly being used by policymakers to complement mainstream science.

Article by Katie Surma for Inside Climate News

The past few years have been a triumph for traditional Indigenous knowledge, the body of observations, innovations and practices developed by Indigenous peoples throughout history with regard to their local environment. 

First, the world’s top scientific and environmental policymaking bodies embraced it. Then, in 2022, the Biden administration instructed U.S. federal agencies to include it in their decision making processes. And, last year, the National Science Foundation announced $30 million in grants to fund it.

Traditional Indigenous knowledge, also called traditional ecological knowledge or traditional knowledge, is compiled by tribes according to their distinct culture and generally is transmitted orally between generations. It has evolved since time immemorial, yet mainstream institutions have only begun to recognize its value for helping to address pressing global problems like climate change and biodiversity loss, to say nothing of its cultural importance.  

Traditional Indigenous knowledge has helped communities sustainably manage territories and natural resources—from predicting natural disasters to protecting biologically important areas and identifying medicinal plants. Today, more than a quarter of land globally is occupied, managed or owned by Indigenous peoples and local communities, with roughly 80 percent of Earth’s biodiversity located on Indigenous territories. Study after study has confirmed that those lands have better environmental outcomes than alternatives.

But, just as the links between those outcomes and Indigenous expertise are becoming more widely acknowledged, the communities stewarding this knowledge are coming under increasing threat from land grabbing, rapid cultural changes and other factors.

Then there is the backlash from the right and the left. As traditional Indigenous knowledge has moved into the mainstream alongside science for a better understanding and management of the natural world, critics on all sides have emerged. Some have argued that just as Christian creationism is incompatible with science, so too is traditional knowledge—this argument is widely seen as premised on a misunderstanding about what traditional knowledge is. On the other end of the ideological spectrum, some progressives have balked at the notion that there are fundamental differences between the two systems.

For a better understanding of what traditional knowledge is, Inside Climate News spoke with Gonzalo Oviedo, an anthropologist and environmental scientist who has worked on social aspects of conservation for more than three decades....

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Traditional Knowledge, Innovations and Practices - The Convention on Biological Diversity, the CBD,  Art 8(j) here

Traditional Knowledge Information Portal, which has been developed in order to promote awareness and enhance access by indigenous peoples and local communities to information on traditional knowledge, innovations and practices relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity - here

The second edition of Local Biodiversity Outlooks is a landmark collaborative piece of research and analysis which acts as a companion publication to Global Biodiversity Outlook. here