Indigenous knowledge

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Indigenous knowledge

Water and Peace

When properly managed, water can be a peacemaking platform for long lasting cooperation

Water cooperation

Water is a growing concern in many parts of the world. Countries can improve their water resilience through transboundary water cooperation over shared waters.

Indigenous peoples are the custodians of many of the world’s most fragile and important ecosystems. They also possess invaluable knowledge about sustainability and resilience, so they have a vital role in protecting our environment.

Water and the 2030 Agenda

In 2015, the global community launched the 2030 Agenda, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that should be reached by 2030. Some progress has been made, but for most of the goals, the world is not on track to meet the deadline. Water can help us do better.

Water in landscapes

A growing number of people, societies and companies are discovering the power of resilient landscapes. It is still possible to shift to more sustainable practices that recharge water, restore soil health, sequester carbon, and strengthen biodiversity – but we need to make the transformation now.

Agriculture and water

How to increase the productivity of agriculture around the world through better water management.

Groundwater

Groundwater is the regulator of the entire freshwater cycle, but its invisibility makes it difficult to manage and protect.

Rivers

While we all depend heavily on rivers for our survival, many rivers are under constant threat from unsustainable human activities

Water scarcity

Insufficient supply and inadequate infrastructure leaves millions of people in the world without water.

Source-to-Sea

The source-to-sea approach focuses on the strong connection between what happens on land, along waterways, and in the sea.

Water and climate

The climate crisis is essentially a water crisis. When we treat it as such, we get new tools to mitigate climate change and adapt to consequences that are unavoidable.

Water governance

Many of the most pressing challenges in the world are about water: too little, too much or too inferior. Such challenges can only be effectively addressed through adequate governance of available water resources.

The impact of COVID-19

The global COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of people back into poverty and exposed unacceptable gaps between the rich and the poor. One in three people are still not able to wash their hands with soap and water at home.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

More than two billion people in the world lack safely managed drinking water and twice as many lack safely managed sanitation, making WASH one of the most urgent development challenges.

PERSPECTIVES

Youth and water

More and more young people offer important contributions to solving the growing water challenges they are inheriting.

Human rights and water

Having access to water and sanitation has been recognized as a human right since 2010. But water is also essential to ensuring the fulfilment of many other rights.

Gender and water

To improve water governance, we need to take a close look at gender roles.

Across the world, indigenous peoples already manage many water-related risks by bringing traditional knowledge and solutions to a changing climate. In many cases, these measures align with the actions and expertise given by water and climate experts, and deserve greater attention and consideration within national and global climate action arenas. Examples of this are starting to appear, but much more can be done. To put it simply: indigenous peoples represent a source of knowledge that the world cannot afford to ignore.

According to a widely recognized UN definition, indigenous peoples are communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a culturally distinct society or community. More than 370 million people across 90 countries, or five percent of the world’s population, fit that description. Together they occupy, own, or manage an estimated quarter of the earth’s land surface, much of which is of particular importance to the protection of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

Nature Stewardship

Many indigenous value systems are built upon social-cultural values that place importance on the relationship and the interconnections between people and water. These often contain a strong ethic of stewardship, as opposed to seeing water only as a resource, and usually imply a role of protecting and managing water bodies in a sustainable way.

Many indigenous peoples’ systems look to balance immediate and future human needs with those of plants, animals, and spirits. These systems are based on traditional ecological knowledge, principles and practices, as well as deeply rooted wisdom and experience regarding water management that should not be ignored. Rather, we must find ways to promote and incorporate these perspectives in our climate actions, particularly in a water context.