August 9, 2022 marks the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. This occasion marks an opportunity to reflect on the wide ranging contributions of Indigenous Peoples in their stewardship and protection of the environment. The theme of this year's day is the role of Indigenous women in the preservation and transmission of traditional knowledge.

n 2022, the Democratic Republic of the Congo recognized the customary rights of its Indigenous population by adopting a new law on Indigenous Pygmy Peoples. Its enforcement could become the cornerstone of a new approach to secure land tenure and to integrate Indigenous Peoples in conservation initiatives.

Indigenous peoples and local communities used the IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress in July as a key space to present an alternative vision of conservation using effective, indigenous and community-led solutions. Through key contributions to the Congress and independently developed declarations, they rejected colonial conservation practices and shared their perspectives, experiences and stories.

“Why am I here, when it makes me this anxious?” This thought occurs to me as I sit behind the “Youth” microphone in the negotiation room of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), surrounded by hundreds of government representatives and members of civil society. It’s a space I’ve somehow found myself in quite often in the past few years as a member and policy co-coordinator of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), bringing youth voices to the international biodiversity policy space. I haven’t quite yet gotten used to it, taking the floor in a room of people discussing what to do about one of the world’s most pressing problems: the rapid loss of biodiversity. Others might have by now, but I, shy since I was young and a reluctant public speaker, still get stage fright fueled by the heavy responsibility of representation and fear of saying something wrong. And yet here I am, so why?

In the fall of 2021, we helped Indigenous communities in Assam, India manage the government’s unjust garbage dumping practices. Our activism, along with the efforts of other NGOs and judiciary interventions, were enough to compel the municipality to shift garbage dumping elsewhere. Indigenous community members are now back to good health.

A healthy ocean is contingent upon respect for the rights of small scale fishers and Indigenous communities that rely on the ocean for life and sustenance. During the II World UN Ocean Congress in Lisbon, these groups presented a Call to Action that requested that these communities, and their rights and resources, be secured and restored.

We highlight the importance of incorporating Indigenous knowledge in ecosystem restoration. We engaged local communities, in their own language, to understand how invasion has impacted their lives, what they name invasive alien plants for their daily reference and what uses they have derived for these unwanted plants.

Manipur’s Loktak Lake is one of India’s Ramsar sites. A significant natural inland freshwater wetland, Loktak supports a diversity of life including Indigenous Meitei fishing population. The fishers have thrived upon the lake resources for many centuries. Due to the State’s intervention, Loktak fishers’ now face threats to their livelihoods.