Indigenous peoples have a long history of working in partnership with nature.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, is a global agreement that explicitly recognizes the important role Indigenous peoples and local communities play in achieving biodiversity conservation. Its "30x30" target — protecting 30% of the world's land and sea by 2030 — is tied to a requirement that this conservation respect Indigenous peoples' rights, territories, and traditional knowledge.
As part of their commitment to this agreement, as well as providing more legal protection for Indigenous communities, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment along with the National Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (WGII), started drafting a national roadmap in June 2026 to formally recognize and safeguard the traditional knowledge Indigenous and local communities use to protect biodiversity.
Indonesia is a country with tremendous biodiversity in which Indigenous communities already steward roughly 29 million hectares of land through customary practices, however most of this remains legally undocumented. Indigenous communities represent roughly 20% of the country’s population.
Cindy Julianty, WGII’s executive coordinator believes that:
“Conservation is not only about protecting species; it is also about safeguarding the relationship between people and nature. This is something we often overlook. Too often, our agendas and programs seem to view nature merely as an object to be used and exploited by humans. Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, see nature as a subject.”‘
Indonesia could provide a blueprint for other countries to follow.