The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Biodiversity conference offered an interdisciplinary panel of speakers ranging from Indigenous and community leaders, political scientists, economists, poets, youth activists, researchers, scientists and others from an array of backgrounds. Each session created spaces for discussion involving thinkers and actors from around the globe. The conversations introduced solutions to biodiversity challenges that were inspiring, but far from simple – and fittingly so, as the trouble of diminishing biodiversity is a complex and interconnected one. Therefore, each conversation discussed challenges, but most importantly, calls to action.
A session that stood out to me was on the ‘Journey to Malaysian Borneo with the Borneo Project’. Listeners were given an insider perspective into how this island’s many different indigenous groups are working to protect their livelihoods by defending their forests. The session offered an imperative observation of how forests thrive when Indigenous land rights are restored, and the case study for Malaysian Borneo is one of the most important visions that the world must offer its attention to. Indigenous land sovereignty is an absolute keystone message for a forum centered around biodiversity, with mounting evidence pointing to the efficiency and dimension that Indigenous peoples have in the sustainable conservation of forests (Rogers, 2018).
The following session, ‘Indigenous solutions to global challenges in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo’, served as a complementary session that engaged listeners further with a more detailed perspective on what the work being done is and what the main challenges were.
Being able to hear straight from the people who work and live in this community led to a very productive, engrossing and informative session. To begin with, the involvement of community members at the center of conservation was described as essential for building their capacity in managing and establishing projects for the future. This agency also ensures that the data collected is what is useful for the community themselves, since they know what they need most. In the case of the Baram River Basin in Malaysian Borneo, the community-led conservation that was highlighted during this session was the Baram Heritage Survey, an ecological survey meant to measure the density of the animal population and gain a deep understanding of what is in the tropical rainforest. The field technicians who gather the data are people who grew up with the land, hunting and gathering and getting to know the ecology on an intimate, personal level. To support their skills and knowledge of the land, they also use a phone app that was designed logically for local purposes – for example, animals are described the way they see them instead of with scientific terms. All of the information is available to be used by the community, and their ownership of the information allows the community to decide how the data will be used by science teams, NGOs and governments. Mentioned in a short video presented in this session, a piece frome the documentary ‘Sunset over Selungo’, one of the technicians discussed how they are able to look at a piece of fruit with a bite taken from it and identify the animal who did it. This innate magnitude of understanding his natural surroundings illustrates a deep connection that endogenous conservation techniques could not fulfil.
Although there are a plethora of climate commitments at government or regional levels that are designed to mitigate and adapt to the world of climate change, not enough is being done at the rates required for stability. The Heart of Borneo Declaration, as mentioned in the session, is an agreement to protect the forest and its resources. While being ‘great on paper’, according to the speakers, this agreement fails to stop roads from being built, and while extraction, mining and megaprojects presume, local people are left worried about how they will make a living when the forest that is directly tied to their livelihoods is being destroyed. The immediate connection that Indigenous people have with the natural world points to why they are some of the greatest defenders of it.
The land’s well-being is the well-being of the Indigenous people – and really, it is the essence of well-being for all living creatures on Earth. The symbiotic relationship that Indigenous peoples have had with the Earth in particular, points to their protection of it. They care for the land, and the land cares for them in return. Galina Angarova, a speaker in the plenary session of “Thought leaders in biodiversity”, was a powerful Indigenous voice who spoke of the Indigenous peoples co-evolution with the environment and how the two cannot survive without each other. Her words speak more than I could explain: “more than part of the land – I am the land, and the land is me”. She discusses the Penan people, a nomadic indigenous people living in Sarawak and Brunei, who stress that this protection is not only for the needs of Penan, but it affects all people, the whole world, and all living beings.
In conclusion, this was a ground-breaking session that took the statistics of effective Indigenous land conservation and showed it in practice. Even with all of the forces of opposition and challenges they face, the people involved in these sessions continue to fight to conserve their land because protecting the land is protecting their lives. This is why establishing land rights is a critical and necessary move for protecting biodiversity and establishing mitigating movements amidst the climate crisis, for if they are able to work this effectively under strenuous conditions, we can only imagine what can be done when Indigenous rights are restored and they are put in the rightful position at the center of conservation. To #BuildBackBetter, we must invest in long term, nature-based solutions over short term gain, and this will depend upon Indigenous leadership among other solutions that foster local and community-based organization, resilience and capacity building.
Although the GLF Biodiversity conference brought attention to the many barriers to success and the attacks on biodiversity, there was a consistent message of hope, strengthened through a rhetoric of resistance against the colonization of nature and those who protect it. After all, as said in the last plenary session, “we are all future ancestors”, and we must be aware of the Earth that we will leave behind.