Land Back: Indigenous Environmental Stewardship and the Path Forward

Indigenous peoples around the Earth serve an outsized role in the conservation of natural resources including land, water, flora, and fauna.

We make up only about 6 percent of the total global population, yet occupy, own or manage an estimated 20 to 25 percent of Earth’s land surface. The lands Indigenous peoples inhabit or maintain also hold most of Earth’s remaining biodiversity and intersect with about 40 percent of all protected areas and ecologically intact lands.