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A new report from the Wyss Campaign for Nature highlights the conservation leadership of indigenous and local communities around the world. The report showcases place-based indigenous conservation success stories and perspectives from four community leaders in the Canadian arctic, Australia, Kenya, and Montana.
Indigenous peoples play a crucial leadership role in efforts to safeguard fragile ecosystems across the planet that are threatened by rapid habitat fragmentation and climate change. Not only do indigenous communities oversee lands that contain 80 percent of the Earth’s remaining plant and animal diversity, but studies have also found that lands and waters overseen by indigenous peoples and local communities are more likely to remain less degraded by human activities.
The lessons from indigenous leaders highlighted in the report are timely: global human activity has altered three-quarters of the Earth’s lands, while within the United States, about a football field worth of natural area is converted to human development every 30 seconds. In the face of this crisis, scientists have called on policy-makers and communities to conserve at least 30 percent of the planet’s lands and oceans by 2030, a necessary step to prevent the unraveling of fundamental natural systems.
As the global community works toward this bold conservation goal, stories of indigenous and local conservation help lead the way forward.
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As long as our homeland is threatened, I will stand alongside my Blackfeet Nation and conservation friends, working together for the ecological and spiritual integrity of our home, and on behalf of the generations yet to come.”
