The indigenous peoples say: “We do not own the land, the land owns us”.
When they were forced away, the ecological diversity started to degenerate.
Today there are 370 million indigenous people in 90 countries in every region of the world. Indigenous people have (or had) their own land and territory, to which they are tied myriad ways. For indigenous peoples, conservation of biodiversity is an integral part of their lives and is viewed as a spiritual and functional foundation for their identities and cultures. Where they have regained rights, they have rapidly regenerated desolated forest areas without being asked, to the benefit of all of us.
While only 11 percent of the planet’s forest is under their guardianship,
indigenous territories contain 80 percent of the earth’s biodiversity.