The world’s biodiversity crisis is exposing the limits of modern conservation

This article has been reviewed by a Digital Journal editor and may be licensed for reuse.

A study published this year in Nature tracked genetic diversity across 628 species spanning nearly every terrestrial and marine region on Earth. Two-thirds of the populations analysed had been affected by measurable threats. Fewer than half had received any conservation management at all. The data, drawn from more than three decades of research, point to a slow erosion running beneath the more visible signs of the biodiversity crisis, one measured in the shrinking genetic reserves species need to adapt and survive.

Set against that finding is a global geospatial analysis by UNEP which found that Indigenous Peoples manage or hold tenure rights over roughly 38 million square kilometres of land, more than a quarter of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Those lands overlap with close to 40 percent of the world’s terrestrial protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes. The overlap reflects generations of stewardship that predates most modern conservation frameworks by centuries. UNEP has framed recognition of Indigenous land rights and institutions as important to achieving conservation goals.

As New York Climate Week approaches and regulatory bodies draw renewed attention to biodiversity and climate solutions, these datasets seem unsettling. Species are losing genetic ground even as the people best positioned to protect them are, in many conservation models, treated as bystanders rather than partners. 

Many of the places conservationists are trying to safeguard may already have communities with generations of knowledge about their species, landscapes, and ecological relationships. Katie Jones, Community Engagement Director at Wise Ancestors and enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation, argues that conservation strategies need to account for that knowledge at the point where decisions are made. Because those designs may leave out the holders of traditional ecological knowledge, Jones argues, the resulting projects may function as isolated interventions rather than durable strategies. 

She states, “Those types of siloed approaches are not sustainable for perpetuating the conservation goals.” 

Genomics can offer conservationists increasingly sophisticated ways to understand those pressures. Yet Jones argues that genetic intervention cannot, by itself, repair the human systems that produced ecological decline. “Technological solutions are a one-pathway solution,” she notes. She advocates for a more comprehensive conservation model that draws on traditional knowledge alongside Western scientific tools. This matters because a species can receive genetic assistance while the habitat pressures surrounding its population continue.

Wise Ancestors has built its conservation model around that premise. The nonprofit organization works to combine genomic research with community-led conservation, developing Conservation Challenges with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities while incorporating genome sequencing, biobanking, and community-determined governance into its work. Its approach places free, prior, informed consent and Indigenous data sovereignty within the structure of conservation research itself. Every project, Jones adds, is co-designed with the communities whose land and species are involved.

The logic extends into the scientific record. According to Jones, genomic research depends on large-scale data sharing, yet concerns have been raised that conventional open-data practices can conflict with Indigenous authority over information derived from their lands, species, and communities. A PNAS paper examining the issue found that the openness model underpinning genomics can unintentionally create barriers to Indigenous participation. 

Jones frames data governance as a conservation issue because information can carry consequences after a sample has entered a database. “There is always a possibility for misuse of data that are available in open databases,” she notes. In her view, communities should help determine appropriate repositories and how information is annotated and used downstream. Local Contexts labels and notices are among the mechanisms Wise Ancestors uses to support those governance practices.

Jones places the scientific question within a much longer history of observation. “Western-specific DNA sequencing can be thought of as a form of observation,” she explains. “As much as ancestral knowledge has come from millennia of observation and experimentation and science, and it is science, what Western technology is doing is just bringing tools to the task of observing nature.”

Funding presents another test of whether such an approach can operate at scale. Jones argues that restricted grants can determine where an organization works, whom it works with, and how projects are delivered, creating tension for models built around community priorities. She points to crowdfunding as one mechanism that Wise Ancestors uses to give communities greater influence over project design by allowing individual supporters to fund work aligned with specific conservation needs.

The model reflects a wider shift in conservation thinking. Jones believes Indigenous data sovereignty is increasingly recognized as a framework through which Indigenous Peoples can exercise authority over data concerning their communities and lands, while scientific organizations are confronting the limits of treating openness as an uncomplicated public good. Jones believes the pivotal question is ultimately whose knowledge enters the conservation conversation.

“We need to be listening to communities and listening to the voices of people who are in relationship with the places,” she argues. “To formulate an effective conservation strategy, we need to be listening to more than just the Western voice.” Wise Ancestors is putting that principle into practice by creating a conservation model in which scientific tools are informed by the communities and ecological relationships closest to the species at stake.

The conservation sector appears to be confronting a shift in who gets to shape the knowledge that determines what is protected, how it is protected, and whose interests are considered in the process. Genomic science can reveal vulnerabilities within a species with extraordinary precision, but the meaning of that information depends on the ecological and cultural knowledge surrounding it. 

As biodiversity loss accelerates, conservation will have to account for both forms of knowledge and the authority of the communities that have carried them across generations. The most consequential advances may come from changing the structure of conservation itself, giving scientific innovation a stronger foundation in stewardship and local decision-making.