The baseless stat that could be harming Indigenous conservation efforts

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This is a podcast extra from Nature.

This time, we've got a story about how a statistic seems to have spread like wildfire

in the United States.

Even though it's baseless, and might actually be doing more harm than good to the people

it's intended to help.

So there's this figure doing the rounds, you may have heard it, that 80% of the world's

biodiversity is a problem.

The 80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of indigenous people.

Now, whilst there is a truth there, indigenous people contribute a lot to protecting biodiversity,

the 80% stat itself seems to have appeared almost out of nowhere.

But now it gets mentioned at UN meetings, in scientific reports, at conferences, in

news articles, and even in the pages of Nature itself.

Now, a group of scientists, including researchers, are trying to figure out how to protect biodiversity.

Researchers from indigenous groups have written a comment article in Nature about how this

baseless statistic, while not only inaccurate, could actually be having a negative impact

on the indigenous peoples it's supposed to support.

For example, if that figure is taken as true, it could prevent further work being done to

understand the actual value indigenous communities bring to biodiversity, as it's considered

a known thing.

To dive deeper into this discussion, senior comment editor from Nature, Lucy Odling-Smee,

spoke to two of the authors, Jojo Carino of the Ibelo Igarot indigenous group in the Philippines,

and senior policy advisor for the Forest People's Programme, and Alvaro Fernandez-Himazares

from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Here's Lucy.

So lots of people have been making this claim that 80% of the world's biodiversity is a

is found in the territories of indigenous peoples.

What makes you think this claim is wrong?

The 80% figure has become one of the most repeated soundbites in UN meetings, in scientific

conferences, and in different policy forums.

And I think that those of us who work in these spaces know that the relationship between

indigenous peoples and biodiversity is too complex to be captured by just a single broad,

unqualified numerical.

The problem is that it's baseless.

There's no empirical evidence supporting it.

Obviously, it's been repeated over and over again.

And I think the reason why this gets repeated is that there is actually a broad understanding

and a lot of evidence that indeed biodiversity is doing much better on indigenous territories.

And so when it gets repeated, I think it is seized upon as a support.

For understanding and valuing the contributions that indigenous peoples are making.

But that desire to support the understanding of indigenous peoples' contributions must

not be simplified or must not be just repeated.

So in your comment piece, you describe how you did a literature search looking for certain

words so you can trace when and where this statement has been made.

And then from that, you discover that.

Well, actually, it seems to have come from people misinterpreting at least two published

statements.

And I actually found that quite surprising that this 80 percent claim really does seem

to have emerged from thin air.

And I wondered whether you think that's actually something that does just happen quite often

in science or whether this is quite an unusual case.

I mean, the document that everyone cites to back up the claim that 80 percent of the world's

biodiversity is found on indigenous peoples' lands doesn't have any single evidence to

support that claim.

Actually, there seems to be some sort of misquote because they provide a reference to a report

that only speaks about a specific territory in the Philippines where seven indigenous

communities maintain 80 percent of their forest cover.

But I think to your point that there are several examples like this one of ideas that

circulate widely in literature, in conferences and policy meetings, gaining authority as

they are repeated.

And in this process, they get built into the edifices of theories and policies.

And they become so deeply ingrained that then they are hard to dislodge and challenging

to refute.

There's more of that.

And we as scientists have often allowed some of these claims to remain unchallenged because

we have regarded them as, I don't know, as unworthy of attention.

So when did you first hear this 80 percent claim and what was it that made you decide

to come forward and write an opinion piece about it being a mistake?

For me, this was essentially an issue of academic integrity.

And I kind of felt the need to flag it.

And then it's when I discovered that there's many policy ramifications there.

Misleading numbers can have unintended consequences in policy.

There can be hidden costs.

They can increase skepticism among policymakers.

And that led me to try to engage with also within the policy context in which this figure

is used, because it's not just navigating the scientific dimension of it, the fact that

that figure is baseless.

It's also making sure that the critique does not lead.

To further disenfranchisement of indigenous communities, I believe this could lead us

into a dangerous mire because policymakers could have said that because the 80 percent

figure is wrong, then indigenous lands are less important for global biodiversity conservation.

And that would have been very problematic for us.

The important point was that irrespective of this figure, indigenous people's lands are

fundamentally important for global biodiversity conservation, and we have better indicators

and measures and statistics to really.

Highlight this important role of these communities.

In your comment piece, you also talk about how just having this sort of simplistic single

number to sum up so much complexity disregards the truly complex relationships between indigenous

peoples and biodiversity.

Could you just speak a bit more about that?

Yes, indeed, that simplification was not very useful for indigenous peoples because instead

of truly understanding.

Indeed, the complexity of our relationships with our lands and those interactions taking

place within the territories that lead to better conservation.

It was solely this figure that was being cited over and over rather than developing good

relationships with indigenous peoples to understand the knowledge involved.

And also even the relationships with the land and the neighboring political set up, for

example, when you have to engage with foresters or the forest department or other agencies

in order for them to begin to understand what is bringing about good biodiversity in the

territories.

Those diversities and complexities were no longer being inquired into and we're just

being simplified into this type of statistic, so it didn't actually encourage, I think,

very much examination of the problem.

Right.

the evidence and the real stories behind that statistic. Is it even possible to measure global

biodiversity and come up with one figure because it encompasses ecosystems and relationships between

ecosystems, not just the number of species in one particular area? It's true that there's been

advances in the measurements of biodiversity, but I think that coming up with an unqualified

enumeration of the planet's biodiversity as of today is pretty impossible. Usually researchers

tend to deploy very narrow proxies for biodiversity, like the number of species present

in a place, but really quantifying the amount of biodiversity within indigenous people's lands,

even if we accept this proxy, the number of species, there are species that are undescribed,

there's species that are yet to be discovered, and also we would need a very precise knowledge

of the geographical distribution of those species. And the spatial extent of indigenous people's lands

was mapped only a few years ago.

So I think that as of today, there's no way of doing that.

I think that the propensity for scientists and global assessment efforts to put numbers

or to quantify it, I think is actually one of the reasons which has denied indigenous people's

evidence, which come from all sorts of sources, oral history, observations. So in fact, I've found

that in my work on doing community research, I've found that indigenous people's lands are

monitoring. The requirement for global assessments to always put quantitative figures on them

has actually made it difficult for indigenous evidence to be accepted.

So it's not really possible to come up with a single number. I mean, it's just very difficult

to map the amount of biodiversity on the planet. So what is the evidence then that

indigenous lands and seas are important when it comes to conserving?

Well, as Georgie was pointing out, there's ample evidence that indigenous peoples and

their territories and their knowledge systems are essential to the world's biodiversity.

I see this as a multiple evidence base, right? We have evidence that comes from indigenous

knowledge systems, from indigenous scholarship that shows this depth of connection between

peoples and places and all the biodiversity they harbor. But science has also been catching up,

trying to really more comprehensively acknowledge and measure and quantify this relationship.

As of today, we know that indigenous peoples manage or hold tenure rights over a quarter

of the Earth's terrestrial surface. 37% of the remaining natural areas on the planet

lie within indigenous peoples' lands. 30% of the world's climate distribution range

is within indigenous peoples' lands. So we have all these different measures.

And I think that if we really want to acknowledge more comprehensively the crucial roles that are

played by indigenous peoples in stewarding these lands and this biodiversity, we could

start, you know, like digging and looking into this already available evidence, but also

engaging indigenous peoples in really characterizing this biodiversity and providing

opportunities for indigenous scholars and indigenous knowledge holders to support this

endeavor. It is very important that indeed, understanding that it is actually that range

of evidence that is required to be able to characterize and fully understand what is

happening in these places. For example, the report that came out,

the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. I think that was

important in exactly showing the importance of the experiences of indigenous peoples,

because it is important to hear those and understand those stories, but it's important

to work together to conserve biodiversity, respecting and really acknowledging and valuing

the cultures, the knowledge and the work that indigenous peoples have done.

And that has to happen with governments. It has to happen with scientists, which is

why we need to address this matter of these statistics so that we can work better together.

So a lot of people who've been making this 80% claim are those who are actually advocating

for indigenous peoples. So what would you say is a better way for scientists and others

to support indigenous peoples and demonstrate just how important they are in the fight to

conserve what's left of the world's biodiversity?

Wow. What a broad and challenging question. What should be done about it? Well, first

of all I think that recognition in policy circles that indigenous peoples play fundamental

roles will be stronger if based on robust evidence, and coming up with robust evidence

means working together. Indigenous knowledge holders, leaders, thinkers, philosophers have

been speaking on these issues for centuries. And science is only catching up very, very

recently. So we'd better be humble and engage with those who know more than us.

Yes, I'd like to highlight the fact that there is a lot of community-based monitoring

that is currently happening. For example, mapping of our lands, biodiversity, surveys, and

inventories, but also a lot of our storytelling and writing of our own experiences. Because this

will actually support the relationship that needs to exist among all those who are interested in

biodiversity conservation, but also in understanding the actual evidence that exists.

So scientists can do support for what we do and can also add their own research,

but really valuing the fact that there's a lot of evidence arising from community-based monitoring

that is supporting a lot of that.

A global understanding of really what is happening in biodiversity today.

So fascinating. Thank you so much, Georgie Alvaro. Really fantastic conversation. Thank you.

Thank you.

That was Lucy Odling-Smee, speaking to Alvaro Fernandez-Gimizaras from the Autonomous

University of Barcelona in Spain, and Giorgio Carino from the Forest People's Programme in the UK.

For more on this story,

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