A/HRC/51/28 through practices, and transmitted across generations. 18 Women’s knowledge is critical to maintaining cultural identity; creating solutions to conflict through indigenous justice; managing the risks and impacts of climate change; protecting biodiversity; achieving sustainable development; and building resilience in the face of pandemics and other extreme events. 19 Indigenous women are described as teachers, caretakers, healers, guardians of community values, protectors, leaders, adjudicators, first responders and keepers of scientific, cultural and spiritual knowledge. A. Natural resource management and biodiversity conservation 29. Indigenous women reproduce and protect indigenous identity, culture and societal roles on the lands and territories they have traditionally owned, used or occupied. 20 It is out of this intimate relationship of respect, responsibility and interdependency with nature that indigenous women have been able to build and hone their scientific knowledge, a vast, toooften untapped resource for environmental protection and stewardship. Indigenous women’s scientific knowledge has a key role to play in safeguarding ecosystems, maintaining biocultural integrity and designing collective futures to ensure human, multispecies and environmental justice and equity. 30. Indigenous women’s in-depth understanding of botany and animal species can contribute to climate science and mitigate against the catastrophic impacts of climate change. They offer empirical observations and interpretations of the natural world, highlighting elements that climate scientists generally do not consider when designing conservation and climate adaptation and mitigation policies.21 31. Globally, indigenous women play an essential role in conservation and water resource management. For example, in Kenya, Ogiek and Sengwer women practise beekeeping, harvesting honey for food and medicinal purposes as an important element of forest conservation in support of biodiversity.22 Women collect herbal medicine by extracting the specific part required and then leave the plant to continue growing.23 32. In Asia, shifting or rotational cultivation is a defining characteristic of many indigenous peoples living in mountainous areas. Such cultivation involves practices that protect the integrity of the land and the ecosystem, farming small patches of land and then moving on to other areas to allow the areas already cultivated to recover and rejuvenate. Across Asia, there is a lack of understanding of indigenous practices for rotational crop cultivation and forest management and of the contribution that indigenous peoples make to sustainable conservation and biodiversity.24 33. Indigenous women’s special relationship with water is illustrated in the 2008 water declaration of the Anishinaabek, Mushkegowuk and Onkwehonwe nations that emphasizes their responsibility to care for water based on women’s knowledge. The women of the Kimberley region of Australia created the Matruwarra (Fitzroy) River Council and adopted the Fitzroy River Declaration. As guardians of the river, they are speaking up to protect the 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 8 See https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/Indigenous-women-climate-change-first-voice. See Climate Investment Funds, Empowering Indigenous Women to Integrate Traditional Knowledge and Practices in Climate Action (May 2021). See, for example, https://www.fao.org/Indigenous-peoples/news-article/en/c/1374632. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, “Recognising the contributions of indigenous peoples in global climate action? An analysis of the IPCC report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability” (2022). See, for example, https://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/fpp/files/publication/2016/10/sengwerwomenreportweb.pdf; https://www.beesforpeace.org/the-ogiek-and-bees.html; and https://www.ifad.org/en/web/latest//from-kenya-the-ogiek-honey-slow-food-presidium See, for example, https://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/fpp/files/publication/2016/10/sengwerwomenreportweb.pdf; https://www.beesforpeace.org/the-ogiek-and-bees.html; and https://www.ifad.org/en/web/latest//from-kenya-the-ogiek-honey-slow-food-presidium. A/HRC/45/34/Add.3, para. 26. See also communications THA 2/2019, OTH 7/2019, OTH 8/2019, THA 4/2020, OTH 22/2020 and OTH 23/2020.