ECO SOLUTIONS with Sara Troy and her guest Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, on air from January 1st.
Let’s Get Sync’d series
Expert in adaptation of indigenous peoples to and mitigation of climate change, traditional knowledge on the adaptation of pastoralists in Africa. Expert on women and climate change in Africa. Co-Chair, International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, representing CSO at the UNCCD; Member of the Policy Board United Nations – Indigenous Peoples Partnership (UNIPP). Member of the Executive Committee, Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC). Representative, Congo Basin
Indigenous Peoples and the Environment
TUNE IN HERE WITH SARA AND HINDOU TO HEAR HOW EARTH IS SHOWING US THEY WAY.
VIDEO
It is estimated that Indigenous territories contain 80 percent of the earth’s biodiversity. Indigenous lands also hold unquantified megatons of sequestered carbon as 11% of the planet’s forests are under their guardianship. These regions face an unprecedented and rapid loss of biodiversity and climate change effects resulting from the fossil fuel-based industrialized global economy and natural resource extraction. Many traditional Indigenous lands have become biodiversity “hotspots.” For Indigenous Peoples, conservation of biodiversity is an integral part of their lives and is viewed as spiritual and functional foundations for their identities and cultures. It is no coincidence that when the World Wildlife Fund listed the top 200 areas with the highest and most threatened biodiversity, they found that 95 percent are on Indigenous territories.
Indigenous Peoples and the environments they maintain are increasingly under assault from extractive industries such as mining, oil exploration, logging, and agro-industrial projects.
Indigenous Peoples resist this invasion with tremendous courage and skill, but their protests are too often ignored by governments and corporations.
Environmental activist and geographer Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is one of 14 National Geographic Emerging Explorers for 2017. This group is being honored for the way its members explore new frontiers and find innovative ways to remedy some of the greatest challenges facing our planet. The 2017 class of Emerging Explorers will be honored at the National Geographic Explorers Festival in Washington, D.C. in June.
In rural parts of Chad, a nuisance plant has begun to spring up—one that strangles crops and can’t be eaten by the cows. People call it “the bad herb,” says Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim. It’s one of many changes her people, the nomadic Mbororo, are noticing: declines in milk from the cows, new illnesses, shifting seasons.
Ibrahim is working to collect indigenous knowledge about natural resources in Chad as part of a 3-D mapping project, while also representing her community in climate discussions at the United Nations. She describes a childhood that straddled two worlds: school in the capital city of N’Djamena and tending cows among family in the Mbororo. Now she bridges the gap between the indigenous people who intimately know their land and the governments making decisions many miles away.
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