Indigenous and local communities are not secondary actors in biodiversity conservation, but decisive agents who are already protecting the natural environment worldwide. Their ancestral knowledge and environmental stewardship practices — often invisible and unknown to academia and policy — are essential for designing more effective and inclusive strategies that sustain biodiversity and foster a fairer, more sustainable future.

These are some of the conclusions of an article published in the journal BioScience and led by Giulia Mattalia of the Botany Laboratory at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Science at the University of Barcelona, an associated unit of the CSIC, and Irene Teixidor from the Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Marine and Continental Ecology in France. Experts from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), the University of Victoria (Canada), the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Chile), Tribhuvan University (Nepal) and the University of Turku (Finland), among other institutions, took part.

The study indicates that strengthening indigenous and local management practices within scientific and policy biodiversity conservation frameworks could contribute to more effective and inclusive conservation. “This would allow us to move beyond conservation based on colonial models, which ignore sustainable traditional uses and practices in protected areas,” explains Professor Giulia Mattalia, who also carried out this research at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and at the New York Botanical Garden.

“It is essential to foster policies that consider custodians of biodiversity as being as important as biodiversity itself; this would make it easier to assess the benefits of custodianship from the perspective of those who carry it out,” the researcher states. “There is scientific evidence that this paradigm shift in biodiversity conservation is positive for nature, as shown in our articles and many others, and it also contributes to social justice and the decolonization of conservation strategies,” adds Professor Irene Teixidor.

For more effective and inclusive conservation

Each environmental stewardship practice is an expression of the reciprocal relationships between people and the natural environment, directly connected to cultural identity and different worldviews. “Many of these practices have existed for hundreds of years and contribute to maintaining landscapes of high natural and cultural value,” Teixidor notes.

The study presents an innovative conceptual framework that identifies environmental management practices in different points around the planet — from Ecuador to Switzerland, from Nepal to Canada — structured across three levels of ecological organization: the target species (populations), species assemblages (communities) and ecosystems or landscapes. This framework is illustrated through a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on key cultural species, which have high ecological and anthropological value in various societies.

The study, which reviews 242 scientific articles, has identified 343 reports of management practices targeting almost 1,000 key cultural species, along with 1,652 reports on the contributions of these species to people. “This study is the first review of these practices on a global scale,” explains Teixidor.

The new framework presented in the study offers a comprehensive and coherent classification “that allows practices to be compared at different scales, unlike previous references, which often focused on specific taxa, particular ecosystems or small social groups,” details Mattalia.

“This framework, — she continues — allows us to identify and classify intentional impacts and positive collateral effects on the wider socio-ecological system. Moreover, the shared language for environmental co-management facilitates dialogue between local and indigenous communities, scientists and conservation managers.”

Likewise, this flexible framework recognizes “that biophysical actions are closely linked to spiritual, social and political dimensions,” the researcher notes.

How to protect species of high cultural value

The study reveals that practices such as controlled burning, translocation, selective harvesting and habitat modification not only sustain culturally significant species, but are also transmitted through broader socio-ecological systems.

The study is illustrated with emblematic cases of species management practices connected to key cultural species. For example, the Huancavilca community — a pre-Columbian culture of the Ecuadorian coast — and the Ecuadorian ivory palm (Phytelephas aequatorialis), in an environment threatened by deforestation and forest overexploitation; the Haida of Canada and the abalone Haliotis kamtschatkana, which suffers the effects of overfishing, poaching and climate change, or the Chepang culture and the Nepali butter tree, Diploknema butyracea, connected to the heart of the Asian continent and affected by market fluctuations.

These species of high cultural value are also threatened today. “To protect them, conservation should focus not only on the species but on maintaining the relationship of mutual care between communities and key cultural species,” says Mattalia.

A shared language between different disciplines

Overcoming the academic invisibility of environmental stewardship strategies has been one of the major obstacles to research. “Many practices have been invisible to academics because of the wilderness paradigm, a Eurocentric view that ignores how humans have shaped landscapes for millennia. Furthermore, the dichotomous nature–human epistemology (positivist and Western) has maintained a rigid distinction between humans and nature, which makes it difficult to understand reciprocal relationships,” says Mattalia. “Finally, the lack of common terminology has also made it difficult to identify and compare practices in previous studies.”

Currently, management practices are not yet sufficiently recognized in instruments such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and this is an objective that should be achieved in the future to ensure equitable governance. To incorporate environmental stewardship practices on a wider scale for the benefit of the entire planet, it would be important to adopt transdisciplinary approaches through multiple value systems (instrumental, intrinsic and relational) in policy decision-making, to reflect the holistic perspectives of communities.

“A transdisciplinary approach involves working together and with respect, alongside those who practise environmental stewardship, who maintain knowledge of and relationships with biodiversity,” explains Teixidor.

The team also proposes applying the scalability of local results, using the proposed conceptual framework as a tool to analyse and enhance the positive outcomes of local stewardship on a global scale. Finally, considering these practices is a step towards respecting and valuing the people who carry them out.