Conservation itself is a social and political and not a
biological process, according to Alcorn (1994). One social aspect related to
biodiversity and its management is the world’s indigenous peoples. They occupy
and inhabit territories of high levels of biodiversity in which, their culture
is associated with the maintenance of the natural ecosystem. These indigenous
people are frequently categorized as impoverished and are treated as unseen.
Indigenous people play a key role
in climate change mitigation and adaptation by making reference to a climate
change agenda with the full involvement of indigenous peoples rather than
involving only the government and private sectors. Indigenous peoples have the
knowledge to many solutions. For instance, over years, indigenous peoples have
developed landscape designs that can counterattack the negative effects of
climate change as well as, they have developed several genetic varieties of
medicinal and useful plants and animal varieties that is resistant to climate
change and ecological variability. Indigenous values and beliefs have brought
about livelihood strategies to provide essential input into understanding low
carbon development schemes which are used and how they can be endorsed.
Over centuries the relationship between indigenous people
and the environment have degraded because of forced removal of their
traditional and sacred lands. This removal of indigenous people is caused by many
challenges of social and economic wants from forestry activities, mining and
development programs. For example, commercial plant varieties have replaced
locally adapted varieties used in traditional farming systems thus leading to
an increase in industrialized farming methods. These activities have cause
severe environmental damage of flora and fauna species in which some have
become extinct. They also face discrimination in terms of culture, language,
religious beliefs and rights to land ownership where they lived for hundreds of
years and thus has never been high on the list of priority by the global
community.
Another is, economic challenges
over their traditional knowledge. For example, many commercial products such as
medicines which are derived from traditional knowledge have been developed and
patented by big companies for commercial use in order to gain hefty economic earnings.
Unfortunately, there is such no economical benefits for the indigenous peoples
who have been developing and using the same products.
It has often been discussed that
indigenous knowledge and their culture cannot survive this ever changing
environment unless the government wants and has the political will to protect
them, both locally and globally. Government along with private sectors need to
work in cooperation to integrate indigenous persons and knowledge into policies
to protect the current existing biodiversity . This will not only improve
accountability and authority of approaches taken but also strengthen capacity
building and managing of natural resources and the ecosystem.
