Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration from the Himalayas to the Caatinga: keeping the momentum

Rome – The Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration is expanding, demonstrating its potential of change for good. Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems are rooted in healthy territories and ecosystems. The food security of millions of Indigenous Peoples, their ways of life, knowledge and traditions depend on them. Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration is so important because it supports the sustainability of Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems.

For the past seven years, in seven countries Biocentric Restoration has started in key ecosystems managed by Indigenous Peoples. This Global Programme restores knowledge as much as it restores degraded lands. By putting Indigenous Peoples’ rights and cosmogonies at the centre, the Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration revives ancestral wisdom along with unique vegetation.

The Programme is recovering the lost memory of Indigenous Peoples’ territories, strengthening ecosystems’ resilience and Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems as well. The innovative approach of this Global Programme keeps gaining momentum and has recently expanded in Nepal and Brazil.

Getting started in Nepal

In May, the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit and key Nepalese Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations coordinated a five days inception workshop on Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration. Indigenous experts from Brazil, Ecuador, and India joined the training to ensure South-South support to Nepal.

This technical workshop reinforced the connection between the profiling of Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration Global Programme.

Bote Indigenous Women in Teray region, Nepal. © Yon Fernández-de-Larrinoa

Nepalese authorities and communities are concerned at the increased frequency of landslides, affecting roads, villages, rivers and displacing people. The Himalayas is a highly vulnerable region that has seen reforestation in past years with non-native vegetation. There seems to be a correlation between the new forests of foreign trees and the lack of sub-canopy vegetation’s diversity that holds the soil in place. With the heavy rains, the roots systems under the foreign forests cannot hold the soil and landslides are becoming a serious concern. 

Native Vegetation in the Narang Forest and landslides in  foreign forests the Mahabarata range, Nepal. © Yon Fernández-de-Larrinoa

FAO Nepal and the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit met with some of the affected villages to initiate Indigenous Peoples Biocentric Restoration. Authorities and Indigenous Peoples’ leaders in the Teray region are also interested in this revolutionary approach. Together with FAO Nepal there are ongoing discussions for the development of a National Programme on Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration.

Keeping the momentum in Brazil

While the mission in Nepal served as a base for starting the Programme in a new area, the work on Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration in Brazil is already ongoing. And the Indigenous Peoples’ field mission to the country strengthened and expanded it even further.

In Brazil, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI) and the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (FUNAI) invited the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit to expand the restoration work in country into new Indigenous Peoples’ territories.

FAO PSUI visiting the Xukurú People © Gozman Gallego

The FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit started work in the Caatinga Bioma with the Xukurú People a couple of years ago. The Caatinga is the largest dry forest in the world. It spreads for thousands of hectares and helps regulate the humidity in the Amazon basin. It is one of the dry ecosystems prioritized by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).  The work with the Xukurú People is restoring more than 80 hectares in this weather-regulating ecosystem, by working with the vegetation in the sacred rocks and in key ecological corridors running through this thorny forest.

The dry vegetation in the Sacred Rock in Caatinga © Yon Fernández-de-Larrinoa

Following the success of the first phase, the Xukurú People are starting a second phase putting under restoration additional 70 hectares. Given the experience and the success of this project, FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit and the Xukurú People are considering creating a centre for Training of Trainers at the Casa das Sementes, which could serve as a sharing and learning hub for other Indigenous Peoples who want to join the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration Global Programme in the region.

During the mission, FAO, FUNAI and MPI visited the Tapeba and Guajajará Indigenous Peoples' territories. The leaders of both Indigenous Peoples’ communities will join the work before the end of 2025, aiming to put under restoration key ecosystems affected by intensive agriculture, deforestation, mining and livestock raising.

Tapeba elder identifying lost species of sacred trees at a seed bank © Gozman Gallego

On the eve of the upcoming COP30 in Belem, FAO met and discussed with Jôenia Wapichana, the president of FUNAI (Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas), and H.E. Sonia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples. Both institutions are requesting FAO to further expand the experiences carried out in these three Indigenous Peoples’ territories to other Indigenous Peoples’ communities in the country.

From the Himalayas in Nepal to the Caatinga in Brazil, the Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration keeps gaining momentum. New Indigenous Peoples and governments are joining the collective efforts. Expanding over different socio-cultural regions, the Global Programme is revealing its transformative potential by uniting restoration efforts to Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems. It is the way to follow in the path towards a better, equitable, sustainable and food secure future for all.