Enabling conditions for conservation on Indigenous and community lands

Area of Science:

• Conservation Science
• Environmental Policy
• Indigenous Studies

Background:

• Global policy increasingly recognizes Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP&LC) for biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation.
• An implementation gap exists between global policy and on-the-ground conservation efforts by IP&LC.
• Lack of a coherent evidence base hinders effective support for IP&LC contributions to conservation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore enabling conditions and ecological outcomes of conservation on Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP&LC) lands.
• To identify knowledge gaps and biases in the empirical literature regarding IP&LC conservation.
• To inform strategies for supporting rights-based conservation approaches.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review of 3 bibliographic databases.
• Screening of 182 articles based on predefined inclusion criteria.
• Analysis of links between 20 enabling conditions and 11 ecological outcomes.

Main Results:

• Most research focused on governance and law/policy enabling conditions impacting forest cover and quality.
• Significant knowledge gaps exist regarding the effects of enabling conditions on species-level outcomes.
• Impacts on ecosystem services like soil/water quality and carbon sequestration remain under-explored.

Conclusions:

• Current research provides an incomplete picture of how to best support Indigenous and community conservation.
• Future research should prioritize examining understudied linkages and the quality of existing evidence.
• Understanding these dynamics is crucial for advancing rights-based conservation and the Global Biodiversity Framework.