How to support Indigenous Peoples on biodiversity: be rigorous with data

Abstract

For at least two decades, scientists, policymakers and journals, including Nature, have cited a statistic without determining its validity. The data point in question is that 80% of global biodiversity is under the stewardship of Indigenous Peoples. There is no doubt that Indigenous communities are core to the conservation of biodiversity, but to say that they are stewards of 80% of the world’s genetic, species and ecosystem diversity isn’t supported by evidence, as the authors of a Comment article last week stated (Á. Fernández-Llamazares et al. Nature 633, 32–35; 2024).