Indigenous knowledge: a key resource for the survival of humanity.
While we are exploring life on Mars and building robots that can basically do anything, we haven’t yet learned how to live sustainably on this planet. Driven by an industrial rationale aimed at serving an ever-increasing population—with ever-increasing needs—we are changing our planet’s climate, sending species extinct and polluting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Praising their technological ‘progress’, industrialised nations haven’t learned the fundamentals yet: how to preserve and restore biodiversity. As humanity, we are a big part of the problem, but some of us might be part of the solution. Indigenous communities around the world, in fact, have acquired unique knowledge on how to live in harmony within their natural ecosystems and make sustainable use of ecological services for their own subsistence. If we are to finally learn how to make a living on this planet—while respecting its natural laws—we have to make indigenous knowledge a key part of our global solutions.
On the edge of a precipice
Scientific data from all over the globe put us in front of an incontrovertible truth: we are in a biodiversity emergency. Driven by an industrial, short-term, profit-maximising rationale, we are auto-piloting on a route of perpetual extraction and exploitation, pushing natural ecosystems beyond their capacity for self-reproduction. Declines in global biodiversity are driving a ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ - what many scientists name—given its irreversibility—as the most serious environmental threat to the survival of our own species. The WWF Living Planet Report 2020 states that two-thirds of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970.
Amongst the causes pushing us towards this catastrophic edge, there are over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, global climate change, and industrial agriculture and forestry. At a fundamental level, we are the victims of the systems we have built ourselves. Systems that are consistently failing at understanding and managing resources—from complex and highly-interconnected natural ecologies—to allow for our own subsistence. For example, contemporary societies rely on underlying agricultural systems that are major drivers of soil and environmental degradation. Ploughing, unsustainable agricultural practices, deforestation and overgrazing are the main cases of human-induced soil erosion, triggering a series of cascading effects within ecosystems, which include nutrient loss, reduced carbon storage, and declining biodiversity.
As the latest IPBES Report shows, three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66% of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions. Today, more than a third of the world’s land surface and nearly 75% of freshwater resources are devoted to crop or livestock production. Approximately 60 billion tons of renewable and non-renewable resources are extracted globally every year - an amount that has nearly doubled since 1980. Land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land, and more than 30% of marine fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels. About 17 million hectares of tropical forests—an area four times the size of Switzerland—are being destroyed annually.
Serving a logic that prioritises the use of fertilisers, pesticides and high-yielding varieties to maximise production and profits, we are narrowing the spectrum of cultivated crops, turning diverse forests ecosystems into high-yielding monocultural tree plantations. This blind behaviour aimed at maximising yield for human consumption is severely threatening the long-term survival of complex natural ecosystems, upon which our own survival depends.
The problem is not humanity - it’s a part of it.
To argue that these negative impacts are human-caused is true and false at the same time. While these impacts are certainly due to human actions, in fact, it is not all human societies that are to be deemed (equally) responsible for such catastrophic consequences. The main culprits are industrialised, affluent societies who have ‘learned’ to live in detachment from nature, based on the conviction that humans are above nature and, as such, can rule and control it through the power of technology and bio-engineering.
As humanity, if we want to collectively and successfully get out of this emergency, it is important to realise what is contributing to the problem, and what might contribute to the solution. The sooner we recognise this, the more chances for success we will have. When it comes to climate change, indigenous peoples are a small part of the problem, but might be a big part of the solution. Spread around all sorts of natural ecosystems around the world—from the Amazon to the Savannah until the Arctic—even though they contribute little to greenhouse gas emissions, they are particularly exposed and sensitive to climate change impacts due to their resource-based livelihoods. And, exactly in virtue of their close relationship with their supportive ecosystems, they have acquired unique knowledge to sustainably deal with natural resources, agriculture and forest management for their own survival.
A growing amount of evidence, in fact, shows how ecosystems owned or managed by Indigenous peoples are performing significantly better when it comes to the preservation and enhancement of biodiversity. For example, researchers who analysed land use and species data from more than 15,000 areas of Australia, Brazil and Canada found that the total number of birds, mammals, amphibian and reptiles were highest on lands managed or co-managed by indigenous communities. While only representing 5% of the global population, lands managed by indigenous peoples have been preserving 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Thus, if we are to find solutions for how to enhance biodiversity and combat climate change, the adoption of indigenous practices has to play a central role in the global governance process and decisions.
Indigenous knowledge: unique heritage to live in harmony with nature.
The United Nations estimate that around 370 million people worldwide identify themselves as Indigenous. Indigenous communities—especially semi-nomadic and sedentary ones—have been living for millennia in environments with a limited resource catchment, and have thus been incentivised to develop a sophisticated approach towards the management of resources in their local ecosystems. This approach has embedded—in many cases—the principle that biological diversity is a crucial factor in generating the ecological services and natural resources on which they depend.
Their practices for the conservation of biodiversity are grounded in a series of rules of thumb generated through a trial-and-error process over a long historical time. Indigenous knowledge can be conceptualised as a cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs handed down through generations by cultural transmission about the relationship of living beings—including humans—with one another and with their environment. This has enabled them to collectively develop unique skills for identifying, interpreting and reacting to climatic change, and for conserving and even enhancing biodiversity.
Based on such historical continuity of resource-use practices, Indigenous communities often posses a knowledge base of the behaviour of complex ecological systems that is unparalleled in Western societies. Several studies have been documenting some of the sophisticated resource management systems that indigenous peoples traditionally use. Some of these strategies include maintaining genetic and species diversity in crops and herds, mobility, rotation of harvesting pressure, diversified use of landscapes, and livelihoods based on use of multiple resources.
Some indigenous groups have been found to manipulate the local landscape to increase its heterogeneity, and to be motivated to restore biodiversity in degraded landscapes. A research work in the Amazon has concentrated on longer-term changes in the forest structure and found practices that result in the creation of forest islands (apete) - a behaviour that actively promotes patchiness and heterogeneity in the landscapes. Other documented strategies include Aboriginal fire-management techniques to protect Australian landscapes; traditional ways to allow Pacific fish stocks to recover; and species diversity management in traditional aquaculture systems in China, Hawaii and Indonesia.
It’s key knowledge, but we are failing to understand it.
Historically, it has proven difficult for Western science and societies to understand, interpret and incorporate indigenous knowledge in its scientific and policy-making world. Most of previous research has tended to simplistically oppose the Western ‘scientific’ worldview with the indigenous worldview, by often attributing to the latter superstitious, magical and primitive elements because of its close relationship with the belief system. The overall question there has been to investigate the validity of indigenous knowledge from (our) scientific viewpoint, and whether it would collide with the body of knowledge western science had been creating. This has led to indigenous knowledge tacitly reflected as inferior to science, and to the western way of ‘protecting’ nature paying little or no attention to indigenous peoples.
Luckily, this has started to change more recently. On one side, we are assisting to the compilation of a rapidly expanding database generated by both biological and social scientists that describes the complexity and sophistication of many indigenous natural resource management systems. On the other, international documents have been recognising the value of indigenous knowledge to combat climate change, such as reflected in official documents from the Paris Agreement and the Rio Declaration. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development states that ‘indigenous people and their communities…have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices’. Similarly, the Paris Climate Agreement recognises ‘the need to establish a platform for the exchange of experiences and sharing of best practices on mitigation and adaptation in a holistic and integrated manner’.
“Indigenous people must be part of the solution to climate change. This is because they have the traditional knowledge of their ancestors. The important value of that knowledge cannot—and must not—be understated. They are also essential in finding solutions today and in the future. The Paris Climate Change Agreement recognises this. It recognises their role in building a world that is resilient in the face of climate impacts”
Deep collaboration to co-design solutions for global change
We are faced with tremendous challenges. In order to solve them, we absolutely need to make use of all the knowledge human societies have gathered throughout history. As we saw above, indigenous peoples have a millennial proven track-record in preserving biodiversity and establishing healthy, productive relationships with the natural ecologies they are part of. Such knowledge must play a key role in our adaptation, mitigation and regeneration strategies. And, in order to do so, it must be documented, compiled and preserved in a database form, given that it is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate.
At a global level, the greatest priority is to not only recognise the value of Indigenous knowledge—something that research and global agreements are increasingly doing—but to rather give Indigenous peoples a central role in the decisions on how to manage and regenerate natural ecosystems. Power in decision-making processes, in fact, is likely to be the most effective route for the establishment of a trustful and transparent collaboration, enabling the integration of indigenous and non-indigenous bodies of knowledge towards a shared objective. Only mutual respect, appreciation and learning will allow us to co-create solutions by integrating and combining different skills and practices in a unique human encyclopaedia.
To open a respectful and constructive dialogue, however, it is crucial to start by giving indigenous peoples legal recognition over their lands, in order to avoid illegal, forced or otherwise unjust expropriation. The respect of Indigenous rights all over the world is something we cannot fail at anymore. And, acting on the sensible principle of giving the land to those who can manage it better, we should think about increasing rather than decreasing the amount of land indigenous peoples manage and conserve globally. We cannot wait any longer - it’s time to find unity and create a platform for non-hierarchical, deeply collaborative communication. And so it will start an exciting journey learning together and co-creating solutions for how to thrive—as humanity—on our finite and precious planet.
December 2020
Emanuele Di Francesco (emanuele@circularconversations.com)