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Monday, March 29th, 2021

Indigenous peoples by far the best guardians of forests – UN report

Author:     Damian Carrington
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Thu 25 Mar 2021 10.00 EDT
 Link: Indigenous peoples by far the best guardians of forests – UN report
Stephan:   Most urban people think of indigenous tribal people in the rain forest as primitives, and they are if knowing how to do a Google is your criterion. But there are many ways to be a human, and I assure you 99.9% of urban Americans are so primitive in the skills of those tribal people that if you took them out of their normal environment and put them down in a tropical forest their understanding of how to survive for more than a few days would be so primitive almost all of them would be dead in a few weeks, and I say that as someone who used to teach survival skills in wilderness In the same way, these indigenous tribal people also know far better than you and I (I only taught survival skills in North America) about how to manage their environment. This report describes what I mean. The smart move would be to support them not condescend to them.
Indigenous tropical forest tribal people

The embattled indigenous peoples of Latin America are by far the best guardians of the regions’ forests, according to a UN report, with deforestation rates up to 50% lower in their territories than elsewhere.

Protecting the vast forests is vital to tackling the climate crisis and plummeting populations of wildlife, and the report found that recognising the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples to their land is one of the most cost-effective actions. The report also calls for the peoples to be paid for the environmental benefits their stewardship provides, and for funding for the revitalisation of their ancestral knowledge of living in harmony with nature.

However, the demand for beef, soy, timber, oil and minerals means the threats to indigenous peoples and their forest homes are rising. Hundreds of community leaders have been killed because of disputes over land in recent years and the Covid-19 pandemic has added to the dangers forest peoples face.

Demands by indigenous peoples for their rights have become increasingly visible in recent years, the report said, but this has come with increasing persecution, […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Monday, March 29, 2021 at 7:47 am

    I will try to force myself to pry a little money from my slim budget to help protect the rainforests even though I have little income. It is worth it to save the world.