Project Overview
Global Project
This 3-year project is led by Indigenous Peoples from diverse cultures and regions of the world as well as recognized academic researchers. Our funding agencies are:
- Canadian Tri-Council- New Frontiers in Research Fund
- German Funding Agency
- United States - National Science Foundation
- São Paulo Research Foundation
- Swiss National Science Foundation
The Nominated Principal Investigator is Dr. Brenda Parlee from McGill University, Canada. Co-Principal Investigators are: Dr. Mariam Aboubakrine (Canada), Alejandro Argumedo (Peru), Dr. Prasert Trakansuphakon (Thailand), Herb Nakimayak (Canada), Dr. Emilio Moran (United States), Dr. Jürgen Runge (Germany), Dr. Vanessa Boanada Fuchs (Switzerland), and Dr. Mateus Batistella (Brazil).
We are working in eight biocultural regions of the globe, including areas of unique land cover, land and resource management and livelihood traditions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
Anticipated Outcomes
Our project is timely and urgent in key ways:
i) the pressures of climate change and other stressors of globalization are increasingly eroding Indigenous cultures. For example, over half of the world’s Indigenous languages are endangered.
ii) This past decade has also seen an upsurge of Indigenous leadership in climate change advocacy as well as in related work on biodiversity conservation with global agencies and platforms such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, creating momentum and opportunities for ensuring free, prior and informed consent in the geopolitical landscape of the energy transition. By 2027, we aim to have an interdisciplinary understanding of innovations based on Indigenous and local knowledge in ways that are socially and ecologically sustainable.
