Traditional knowledge provides resilience to a changing climate

Today, we are publishing the first in a series of films made in collaboration with Indigenous and local community filmmakers and If Not Us Then Who.  

Traditional knowledge provides resilience to a changing climate highlights how important cultural diversity is to the protection of biological diversity, by explaining the signs that members of the Maya Kaqchikel use to predict changes in the weather. It was filmed by Tirza Yanira Ixmucané Saloj Oroxom (Maya Kaqchikel) and produced by If Not Us Then Who, with input from Ramiro Batzin, Coordinator of Sotz’il and co-chair of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB).  

This film series examines the critical contributions that Indigenous peoples and local communities make to protecting the world’s biodiversity, and complements the Local Biodiversity Outlooks (LBO).  

The second edition of LBO (LBO-2) – a companion publication to the 5th edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook –  is a landmark overview of these contributions by Indigenous peoples and local communities. The report brings together powerful case studies of local action from all over the world: from Torres Strait Islanders’ monitoring of sea grass health to the formation of the Wampis nation’s autonomous government, covering the 1.3 million hectares that makes up their ancestral territory. In the lead-up to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) – when the next global biodiversity framework will be adopted – the report’s publishers will be working with case study authors and others to produce a series of multimedia resources which deepen and enhance the contents of LBO-2.   

LBO-2 was published last year by the IIFB, the Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network, the Centres of Distinction on Indigenous and Local Knowledge, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and Forest Peoples Programme