JAKARTA — In recent United Nations biodiversity conferences, global leaders have championed Indigenous peoples as critical partners in achieving conservation goals. Indonesia, as a signatory to an international treaty on biodiversity protection, pledged to uphold these principles. Yet, its latest conservation law does the opposite—sidelining Indigenous communities and threatening to criminalize their traditional practices, despite global recognition of their essential role in biodiversity stewardship. A rapidly growing body of scientific research has found that Indigenous peoples are the most effective stewards of their forests and the massive stores of carbon and biodiversity within them. A 2023 research paper by think tank the World Resources Institute (WRI) concluded that Amazonian forests managed by Indigenous peoples are strong “carbon sinks” as they remove 340 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, while forests outside the Amazon’s Indigenous lands release more carbon dioxide than they absorb. But as Indigenous communities’ role in biodiversity conservation gains more global recognition, communities in Indonesia, a megadiverse country that harbors the majority of Earth’s species and high numbers of endemic species, are increasingly sidelined from nature conservation efforts. Database records indicate 22.5 million hectares (55.6 million acres) of Indigenous territories in Indonesia have high conservation potential, highlighting the critical role of Indigenous stewardship. Instead of having protected rights to manage their forests that overlap with conservation areas, Indigenous communities in Indonesia are at risk of being displaced from protected areas. Therefore, activists say it is urgent for the Indonesian government and lawmakers to pass a long-awaited bill on…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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