Planet protectors: The Indigenous activists on the frontlines of climate and health

Despite their crucial role, Indigenous people and local communities are often left out of discussions on climate action. Devex spoke to three Indigenous leaders about why community-led approaches are critical for achieving climate and health goals.

By Naomi Mihara

March 15, 2023

Indigenous peoples make up just 5% of the world’s population, yet they manage 25% of the Earth’s land, while as much as 80% of the world’s forest biodiversity lies within their territories.

But Indigenous peoples and other local communities that live off the land continue to face significant challenges regarding access to basic rights such as land tenure and health care, and are often left out of conversations on climate action — despite their critical importance in climate solutions

“Indigenous lands are a principal reason why the Amazon as a whole is still a [carbon] sink. But that may change pretty soon,” said Peter Veit, director of the Land and Resource Rights initiative at World Resources Institute. Research by WRI has found that while Indigenous lands in the Amazon were net carbon sinks between 2000 and 2021, all the land outside of Indigenous lands in the Amazon were collectively a carbon source due to significant forest loss, Veit said. He emphasized that non-Indigenous communities, such as pastoralists and Afro-descendant communities, also play a key role in climate mitigation.

Many communities have faced forced evictions from their ancestral lands or are still fighting for legal land titles. “The challenge now is to try to encourage more leaders to recognize community land rights in their nationally determined contributions and other climate commitments that they make at the national level,” Veit said.

While securing land rights is a key first step towards forest protection and safeguarding human rights, Indigenous knowledge around ecology, health, and medicine has much to offer in the search for climate solutions. Planetary health may be an emerging perspective within the global environment and health communities, but it’s been part of Indigenous communities’ worldviews for thousands of years, Indigenous academics point out

“Planetary health is not a new field,” said Laetania Belai Djandam, an environmental activist from the Dayak community of Indonesia. “This practice of seeing ourselves as coexisting with nature and environment is something that Indigenous communities have been doing for many, many generations.”

To explore the role of Indigenous and community-led approaches to achieving climate and health goals, Devex spoke to three Indigenous activists from Indonesia, Uganda, and Mexico.

“When we protect the forest, we are protecting our source of life, culture, and identity.”

— Laetania Belai Djandam, Indonesian environmental activist

Laetania Belai Djandam speaking at COP 26 in Glasgow in November 2021.

Laetania Belai Djandam speaking at COP 26 in Glasgow in November 2021.

Conservation, as well as the overall health of the forest, are intrinsically linked to Laetania Belai Djandam’s identity as an Indigenous person. The 20-year-old Indonesian environmental activist and medical sciences student was born in Java to Dayak parents and spent her youth traveling around the country, meeting and learning from Indonesia’s Indigenous groups.

Djandam, aged 5, with her father in the rice fields of Bali.

Djandam, aged 5, with her father in the rice fields of Bali.

“When we protect the forest, we are protecting our source of life, culture, and identity,” Djandam said. “I believe the foundation for all of these things is our source of health. So what it means is that the health of the forest becomes the health of the people.” The forest is a source of medicine for communities, as well as providing emotional and psychological nourishment, Djandam explained.

What’s less well understood is how poor health among communities can actually lead to the ill health of the forest, Djandam said. She saw this firsthand while volunteering with nonprofit Alam Sehat Lestari, or ASRI, which works with forest communities in Indonesia.

Teaching an enthusiastic class of children about planetary health as part of the "ASRI Kids" program in Rantau Panjang Village, West Kalimantan, Borneo.

Teaching an enthusiastic class of children about planetary health as part of the "ASRI Kids" program in Rantau Panjang Village, West Kalimantan, Borneo.

By utilizing an approach called radical listening, which prioritizes community knowledge over top-down “solutions,” ASRI discovered that logging had become a way to make money fast in order to pay for expensive health care treatments. “When I was there, I heard about the story of a man who had to cut sixty trees in order to pay for his wife's cesarean section,” Djandam. “That was something I never thought of. I knew that healthy forests lead to healthy people, but I didn't think that the cost of not having health is actually ecosystem destruction.” Together with its sister organization, the NGO Health in Harmony, ASRI addresses this by providing affordable health care, as well as training in organic farming to give community members an alternative to logging.

In exchange for their chainsaws, loggers and their families receive seed money, mentoring, and business planning assistance from ASRI staff.

In exchange for their chainsaws, loggers and their families receive seed money, mentoring, and business planning assistance from ASRI staff.

Djandam was also part of a team of advocates that in 2019 supported the Dayak Iban of Sungai Utik, a customary community living in West Borneo, to gain their land rights after a 40-year battle.

Having secure land rights has enabled the Dayak Iban of Sungai Utik to protect their culture and way of life, build resilience within their food systems, and create livelihoods, Djandam said. 

The next generation of forest guardians: Out in the forest with the indigenous youth of Dayak Iban Sungai Utik community.

The next generation of forest guardians: Out in the forest with the indigenous youth of Dayak Iban Sungai Utik community.

“They have been setting up an eco-tourism package where people can come into the village to learn from the community and the culture, and experience the customary forest that they've taken care of all their lives,” she said. Without land rights, the project would not be sustainable, Djandam continued, because it could be taken away at any time.

Djandam stressed the importance of shifting power back to frontline communities by allowing them space in negotiations. Funding also needs to be made more accessible, she said, both through training communities on how to navigate funding platforms and making direct funding mechanisms simpler and less bureaucratic. 

Belai (left) and Yessy (right), at the entrance of the Dayak Iban Sungai Utik Longhouse in West Kalimantan.

Belai (left) and Yessy (right), at the entrance of the Dayak Iban Sungai Utik Longhouse in West Kalimantan.

“A lot of the time, [funding] is top-down, where we dictate what the communities need and want and where the money should go, when in reality, we are investing in communities because they know how to manage the resources,” Djandam said. “On a larger scale, it really is about decolonizing the systems that we operate in.”

“In our forests, we used to get medicine for free ... We knew all the diseases, and the medicines to cure them.”

– Sylvia Kokunda, founder and CEO, Action for Batwa Empowerment Group

Sylvia Kokunda poses outside of a traditional Batwa hut. Since the community was evicted from Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, they can only access the hut when presenting it to visitors who pay to visit it as part of a touristic attraction.

Sylvia Kokunda poses outside of a traditional Batwa hut. Since the community was evicted from Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, they can only access the hut when presenting it to visitors who pay to visit it as part of a touristic attraction.

Landlessness can have both physical and mental health impacts. The Batwa, who live in southwest Uganda, were evicted from their ancestral forest lands in the name of conservation in the early 1990s.

A Batwa group perform a traditional dance as part of the tourist attraction "Batwa Cultural Experience."

A Batwa group perform a traditional dance as part of the tourist attraction "Batwa Cultural Experience."

Sylvia Kokunda experienced the negative consequences of this uprooting firsthand, growing up with her family on the edges of the forest on land they had been relocated to.

“We faced a lot of marginalization and discrimination from the community [in the new location] because they looked at us almost not as human beings,” she explained. Kokunda is now the executive director of the Action for Batwa Empowerment Group, a women- and Batwa-led organization fighting for the rights of the Batwa people, and is a member of the Land Body Ecologies research group which explores the connection between mental and ecosystem health.

Traditionally, the Batwa collected honey and other resources from the forest.

Traditionally, the Batwa collected honey and other resources from the forest.

Since being forced from their lands, the Batwa can no longer enter the forest (which has been turned into national parks) to gather food, firewood, or medicinal herbs. At the same time, modern health services are prohibitively expensive for the Batwa. “In our forests, we used to get medicine for free, because we had knowledge of herbal medicines,” Kokunda said. “We knew all the diseases, and the medicines to cure them.”

The situation has created deep-seated trauma among the Batwa, Kokunda said. ABEG is currently offering psychosocial support and counseling to community members and for school children to try to encourage them to remain in the school system. Kokunda is calling for the Ugandan government to commit to affirmative action in the delivery of health and education services for the Batwa. “If this is not done … we will continue to be kept behind,” she said.

Members of the Batwa community take part in a community engagement activity focused on environmental conservation.

Members of the Batwa community take part in a community engagement activity focused on environmental conservation.

Ultimately, the Batwa need access to land titles, Kokunda said. “We are living in fear because the land we are staying in is not ours.” The lands they currently live on are provided by various NGOs working to support the Batwa but are not directly owned by the community, she said. “If we had land, we would be able to practice agriculture and have money to even pay our own school fees. Not waiting for the donors, for NGOs, to pay school fees for our kids.”

“We have been living sustainably for many years … We have this knowledge, and it needs to be supported.”

– Emma Pineda, program officer for Latin America and the Pacific Region, Pawanka Fund

Pineda herself comes from a Mayan community in the Yucatán Peninsula.

Pineda herself comes from a Mayan community in the Yucatán Peninsula.

Mayan communities living in the forests of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have practiced beekeeping for at least 3,000 years. “Honey is medicine for us,” said Emma Pineda, program officer for Latin America and the Pacific region at the Pawanka Fund, an Indigenous-led NGO which provides direct financial support to community-led organizations.

Mayan communities living in the forests of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have practiced beekeeping for at least 3,000 years.

Mayan communities living in the forests of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have practiced beekeeping for at least 3,000 years.

Yucatán honey has medicinal properties and is used by Mayan communities to treat ailments like laryngitis, typhoid, and eye infections. But in the past few decades, deforestation and the increasing use of agrochemicals have threatened this ancient practice. “The bees start to die,” explained Pineda, who herself comes from a Mayan community in the Yucatán. 

The use of agrochemicals has also had other negative impacts on health. Pineda said that Mayan communities, who for centuries have grown and eaten a diverse mix of crops — a system known as milpa, with a diet consisting primarily of corn, beans, and squash — are facing more health problems such as cancers and skin diseases since switching to growing genetically modified corn and using pesticides. Studies have cited increasing rates of diabetes and hypertension due to the change from a traditional to an industrialized diet. “The quality of our health is really dependent on the food that we eat,” Pineda said.

In the past few decades, deforestation and the increasing use of agrochemicals have threatened the ancient Mayan practice of beekeeping.

In the past few decades, deforestation and the increasing use of agrochemicals have threatened the ancient Mayan practice of beekeeping.

According to Pineda, communities need access to both Indigenous and modern medicine to address the types of health problems they are now facing, but access to health services remains a challenge. “We have the knowledge to access [Indigenous health care] regarding minor illnesses, but we also have the right to access [Western] medicine when we need a surgery or something like that,” Pineda said. It can take five or six hours to be transferred to a city hospital from the rural areas where most of the Mayan communities live, said Pineda. In addition, governments need to recognize the value of Indigenous medicine in order to make sure traditional knowledge isn’t lost, she said. 

Support for Indigenous ways of life is a crucial part of sustainability efforts

Support for Indigenous ways of life is a crucial part of sustainability efforts

Pineda sees support for Indigenous ways of life as a crucial part of sustainability efforts. “We have been living sustainably for many years. Before colonization, before the creation of countries in Latin America … We have this knowledge, and it needs to be supported.”

Reported, written, and produced by Naomi Mihara
Edited by Helen Lock
Photos provided by Laetania Belai Djandam, Sylvia Kokunda, and Emma Pineda

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