Indigenous Peoples & Environmental Protection
I had already looked into a dataset by Global Witness that reports lethal attacks towards land defenders worldwide between 2012 and 2021. Using other sources I had recently come across, I planned to write up a story based on the combined data sources.
While designing the structure of my data story, I took the decision to use data from a different source (other than the Global Witness dataset) in my introduction. The recent source of information I came across contains a commonly used statistic when talking about Indigenous peoples:
"5% of the world population protects 80% of the biodiversity"
It highlights the crucial role that Indigenous peoples have in protecting the environment. I took this statistic for granted, but set out to find its sources so that I could mention it in my story.
What I found out did surprise me, and that is why I want to document it here.
5% of Indigenous people?
The first half of this statement: "5% of the world population" refers to the share of Indigenous people in the global population. I have linked it back to a World Bank report of 2023 (link: worldbank.org/en/topic/indigenouspeoples).
The World Bank webpage for this report mentions “6%” instead of “5%” and links to a UN organization called ILO (International Labour Organization) and a report published in 2019 (see: ilo.org/publications/implementing-ilo-indigenous-and-tribal-peoples-convention-no-169-towards).
In this ILO 2019 report, the figure 2.1. graphic shows that the global share of Indigenous peoples in the global population is 6.2% (6.2% among men and 6.1% among women).
Protect 80% of the biodiversity?
Looking for a source
"Many areas inhabited by Indigenous Peoples coincide with some of the world’s remaining major concentrations of biodiversity. Traditional indigenous territories encompass up to 22 percent of the world’s land surface and they coincide with areas that hold 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity (WRI 2005)."
While searching for the source published by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in 2005, I found a recent WRI webpage with interesting statistics on Indigenous Peoples and land rights including the 80% statistic that it links to the World Bank 2008 report (yes, the one report that points WRI as the source for that 80% statistic).
This Nature commentary article was published very recently: 4 September 2024. And its (sub)title is: “No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories”.
Yes, such a simple statistic was literally too good to be true! A good clue was that, according to the authors, Indigenous activists refrain from using this statistic.
The misunderstanding
A report was indeed published by WRI in 2005 that contains a similar statistic. Its title is " World Resources 2005 - The Wealth of the Poor, Managing Ecosystems to Fight Poverty" (link to the report: https://www.wri.org/research/world-resources-2005-wealth-poor). In a paragraph about Indigenous communities of the Kalinga province in the Philippines, we learn that their agroforestry and forest management efforts led to "maintaining over 80 percent of the original high-biodiversity forest cover (Southey 2004:1-2; UN Housing Rights Programme 2005:154)".
In the Nature article, the authors make the important point that biodiversity is nearly impossible to fully quantify and map out. And when using the number of known species to do so, we miss out on millions of unidentified species (as well as the diversity within species, the complexity in categorizing valid species...). But the authors' main claim is that even if biodiversity could be fully quantified and spatially delimited, "trying to assign a numerical value to biodiversity on Indigenous Peoples’ territories fails to represent Indigenous values and world views in a meaningful way".
Despite the goodwill behind the spread of this statistic (in scientific publications and the wider media), the essential roles of Indigenous communities in protecting the environment and preserving biodiversity can't be summed up in a one statement or statistic.
Some valid statistics
Biodiversity protection and the roles of Indigenous Peoples are too complex to sum up in a few lines or a few graphics. However those can be a part of painting the wole picture... and also they’re fun, right?
Below are some statistics that can be used.
source: ILO report 2019
source: Garnett, S. T. et al., 2018 and Fernández-Llamazares et al., 2024
source: Sze, J. S. et al., 2024
source: Sze, J. S. et al., 2024
I’m not a member of the Conservation community, but this taught me to be more careful and thoughtful when looking at environemental protection data especially when it relates to the complexity of the relationship between the environment and those who protect it!
"Genuinely valuing and integrating the ecological knowledge
of Indigenous Peoples will lead to a more just and effective
approach to conserving the planet’s biodiversity." Fernández-Llamazares A. et al., 2024