Understanding What Indigenous Land Maps Mean for Your Business
We would like to thank our advisor Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson for his origination of ideas for this article and his guidance to our firm.
Recently, WRI’s LandMark platform released a redesigned and enhanced online platform that maps Indigenous and Community lands. The data is provided by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, to produce tools to help secure their land rights and secure tenure over their lands. While these maps have their limitations, and don’t capture all Communities worldwide, they succeed in highlighting perhaps the most important contribution possible: the value of basic recognition.
In the context of nature risk analysis, the LandMark platform enables companies to easily assess whether their business activities are located near Indigenous and Community lands. This is a milestone in terms of empowering Indigenous communities to strengthen and increase their visibility to the global community. The maps also empower those at the corporate strategy level with knowledge that they may not otherwise find regarding which communities are located near their business activities.
While these maps have their limitations…they succeed in highlighting perhaps the most important contribution possible: the value of basic recognition.
However, the boundaries demarcated on a map do not accurately reflect the true nature of the relationship between an Indigenous Community and the land they inhabit and interact with. The very concept of a geographic boundary was conceived of by governments outside of Indigenous ways of thinking. Moreover, these locations have historically been areas assigned to an Indigenous People by a government- and sometimes, even confined to that assigned land. These maps are therefore not fully reflective of a community’s traditional territory and ancestral ties.
The truth is, there is not a version of any map that can accurately define Indigenous lands. The relationship between Indigenous Communities and the land they steward is dynamic, expansive and multifaceted. While the focus of nature risk assessment is on halting nature loss and restoring ecosystems, the connection between Indigenous Communities and the land includes not only nature, but also cultural and spiritual dimensions. Much evidence points to the critical benefits that the earth receives from Indigenous land stewardship, such as maintaining carbon sinks and preserving biodiversity. With over 50% of the world’s GDP dependent on nature and biodiversity, global society - and the corporations within it - are deeply reliant on the continued land stewardship of Indigenous Peoples.
The relationship between Indigenous Communities and the land they steward is dynamic, expansive and multifaceted.
Yet these maps have immense value, even with their constraints. The Landmark platform enables awareness on the part of the company. It allows for the acknowledgement that Indigenous Communities are not only still present, but are resilient, thriving, and always in relationship with the land that is essential both to their community and to global society. This value of awareness is the first step in instilling the importance of community presence within corporate thinking and planning.
As corporations start their nature journeys, learning how to integrate community presence into their nature-related risk assessment can feel daunting. However, basic recognition is the first step. From there, questions will naturally arise, from which a company can begin to address equity. Only then can a company create a foundation that is not only built on risk management, but also on values of caring for people and the earth.
