A changing climate for Indigenous knowledge

Long before satellites orbited Earth, Polynesian navigators crossed thousands of miles of open ocean by reading stars, swells, bioluminescence, and seabird flight patterns. In the Sahara, Tuareg guides historically travelled by celestial patterns, the sun, wind, and terrain, although their modern navigation now relies more on landmarks and daytime travel. Cognitive science research has revealed that these navigation systems demonstrate sophisticated spatial reasoning through diverse environmental cues, far more integrated than the single-input methods used in laboratory studies. 

There are many more examples of how traditional knowledge has proven its worth, in areas as diverse as water management, agroforestry, health and fishing. Far more than a collection of techniques, these practices are also an expression of a worldview. Textile creation, for instance, has served as another form of navigation, this time in a spiritual sense. The woven skirts of Micronesia's Outer Islands and the strip-weaving traditions of Ghana and Nigeria map community knowledge and cultural identity into symbolic pattern language.

These practices represent entire knowledge systems. They encode, preserve, and transmit understanding across generations. Today, Indigenous communities worldwide are defending their rights to protect such cultural heritage while actively making the case of traditional knowledge systems as parallel scientific frameworks. As Fijian researcher Salanieta Kitolelei noted at the 2025 Second Pacific Island Ocean Conference in Honiara, Solomon Islands: "It is the same thing – we just use a different language to talk about the same thing." 

Traditional Indigenous knowledge has gained recognition in recent years, thanks notably to international instruments like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – but it is nonetheless threatened by cultural and commercial appropriation.

As the climate crisis intensifies and biodiversity collapses, the world turns to the very knowledge systems it once dismissed. According to the United Nations, Indigenous Peoples comprise less than 5 per cent of the global population yet steward lands containing about 80 per cent of Earth's remaining biodiversity. From their close relationship with the surrounding natural world, they have derived valuable knowledge that merits greater attention.

“We observe nature, our animals and plants. We are the guardians of nature and we possess an enormous amount of knowledge about our environment,” noted Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an Indigenous Mbororo leader from Chad and Chair of the 23rd Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, in April 2024. “This knowledge is not theoretical; it has been tried and tested for centuries.”

The accumulated skills and wisdom are not solely passed down mechanically from one generation to the next, but also codified to form complex systems of knowledge, as illustrated by the mastery of textile art in the Pacific and Africa. Pacific weavers understand plant ecology, sail dynamics, and cultural protocol. West African weavers master loom technologies, natural dyes, and symbolic pattern languages. In both regions, knowledge is transmitted through apprenticeship and cultural practice. The textiles themselves become living archives where knowledge resides in the hands, the patterns, and the process.

In Taumako, Solomon Islands, women are custodians of land and sea, harvesting and processing pandanus – a small tree abundant throughout regions like Polynesia and Micronesia – and weaving sails that powered voyaging for more than 3,000 years. As islander Delsie Betty Bosi explains, "The men build most of the canoes; the women feed the workers and children, keeping morale strong, and build the sails." This gendered division of labor, with women as knowledge keepers, mirrors patterns found across the Pacific.

In West Africa, master weavers created kente cloth whose geometric patterns encode philosophy, historical memory, and social identity. Kente, developed by the Asante in Ghana's Bonwire weaving village, was inscribed in 2024 on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Kente patterns encode meanings tied to wealth, spiritual values, historical events, and moral principles.
 

Indigenous ecological knowledge continues to demonstrate sophisticated understanding of environmental relationships. In Australia's Northern Kimberley, Aboriginal communities have revived traditional fire management after decades of colonial disruption. A large-scale study published in 2024 compared fire metrics across eleven years without Indigenous fire management (2001–2011) and eleven subsequent years under Indigenous fire management (2012–2022). It found that fire frequency decreased across more than 42 per cent of the study area during the Indigenous management years. 

Using controlled, small burning practice, or “cool burns” to clear the underbrush during the dry season, the Balanggarra, Dambimangari, Wilinggin, and Wunambal Gaambera peoples reduced wildfire intensity, protected biodiversity, and lowered greenhouse gas emissions. As Catherine Goonack, Chair of Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporation, explained: "Our Wanjina Wunggurr ancestors have been using fire to manage and protect our country for a long, long time. Fire is our most important thing to look after and keep our country healthy." Similar practices are being revived in California (United States) by tribes like the Karuk.

Across the Arctic, Inuit knowledge keepers document rapid climate shifts that confound Western meteorological models. Hunters combine generational observations with modern tools to navigate unpredictable ice conditions. Inuit traditional weather forecasting remains essential, even as elders note that some inherited knowledge no longer functions reliably due to rapid environmental change.

In Africa, farmers across Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Kenya, and Senegal use techniques like zaï, which capture and redistribute water in degraded soils. These methods, combined with intercropping and reliance on Indigenous plant varieties, support soil fertility without synthetic inputs. A 2025 Scientific Reports study in South Africa found that 92 per cent of farmers used Indigenous plant-based measures to manage pests and diseases.

The question of what counts as knowledge sits at the core of Indigenous intellectual sovereignty. Western science prioritizes replicability, quantification, and separation of the observer from the observed. Indigenous knowledge systems operate relationally, holistically, and through long-term intergenerational observation.

UNESCO's Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) programme defines Indigenous knowledge as practices, understandings, skills, and cosmovisions developed by societies with deep relationships to their environments. These systems are dynamic and validated within their own epistemic frameworks. The Inuit Circumpolar Council describes Indigenous knowledge as systematic ways of thinking that integrate biological, physical, cultural, and spiritual realms.

The concept of two-eyed seeing, developed by Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall (Canada), encourages viewing the world through the strengths of both Indigenous knowledge and Western science. Inuit researchers have expanded this by calling for a shift from seeing to sensing, recognizing that intuitive and relational ways of knowing can lose meaning when stripped from their cultural and spiritual context.

Globally, institutions are beginning to recognize these frameworks. The World Health Organization (WHO) established its Global Traditional Medicine Centre in 2022, and the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge now requires patent applicants to disclose and credit Indigenous knowledge used in scientific and commercial applications.

Indigenous knowledge is inseparable from Indigenous identity, governance, and self-determination. As Elin Magga, a Sámi reindeer herder, told a 2024 Arctic gathering, climate change threatens not only livelihoods but entire ways of life. Where Indigenous land rights are secure, conservation succeeds. When rights are undermined, ecosystems collapse.

Research collaborations frequently reproduce extractive patterns. True partnership requires Indigenous leadership from research design through data control and full respect for data sovereignty. Every lost language erases ecological knowledge embedded in vocabulary, stories, and place-based understanding. Every elder who passes without sharing their knowledge represents an irreplaceable loss.

Indigenous knowledge offers tested solutions to global crises, but integration requires structural change. Indigenous leadership must guide the process. Knowledge must be respected within its own frameworks, and intellectual property and data sovereignty must be protected. Long-term support for intergenerational transmission is essential.

Indigenous knowledge systems offer alternative paradigms rooted in reciprocity, stewardship, and long-term ecological responsibility. The weavers still work the dried pandanus. The fire keepers still sense the land. The navigators still teach children to read stars and waves. Despite colonization and disruption, Indigenous Peoples continue to protect biodiversity and hold solutions the world now urgently seeks.

Ihirangi Heke, a Maori researcher, cultural leader and environmental knowledge keeper, described Indigenous knowledge as the longest-running environmental study on Earth. He warns that knowledge sharing must be cautious because of past misuse and that climate spaces like The Conference of the Parties (COP) often tokenize Indigenous voices. 

For Ihirangi Heke, the question is not whether Indigenous knowledge can solve the climate crisis. The question is whether Indigenous Peoples will be in the room with the power to shape the decisions that define our future. The next frontier of Indigenous sovereignty may also be the frontier of our collective survival.