Myths of Biodiversity and Indigenous Lands

6min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This chapter scrutinizes the often-repeated claim that 80% of the world's biodiversity is housed in Indigenous territories, revealing the lack of empirical support for this statistic. The discussion emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of Indigenous contributions to biodiversity conservation and warns against the dangers of oversimplifying their roles.

The often repeated claim that "80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of Indigenous Peoples" appears widely in policy documents and reports, yet appears to have sprung out of nowhere. According to a group of researchers, including those from Indigenous groups, this baseless statistic could be undermining the conservation efforts of the Indigenous People it's meant to support and prevent further work to really understand how best to conserve biodiversity.

Two of the authors joined us to discuss how this statistic gained traction, the harm it could cause, and how better to support the work of Indigenous Peoples.

Read more in a Comment article from the authors: No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.