If indigenous knowledge systems are so effective, then the question becomes: why aren’t they more present in formal environmental policy? The answer, unfortunately, is that most governance structures weren’t built to include them. Indigenous communities are often consulted late in the process - if at all - and their contributions are treated as supplementary, not central. Changing that requires more than inclusion. It requires power-sharing.
Policies need to do more than acknowledge indigenous knowledge; they need to protect the rights of the people who hold it. That means securing land tenure, respecting community governance and giving indigenous groups a meaningful seat at the table where environmental decisions are made. Without this, recognition becomes symbolic at best.
In Namibia, conservancy policies have shown what this kind of support can look like. Local communities are granted legal rights to manage wildlife and tourism activities on their land. This not only brings direct benefits, like income and employment, but also allows traditional conservation methods to flourish under formal legal protection. Wildlife populations in some of these areas have rebounded as a result.
Policy support should also address how indigenous knowledge is documented, shared and respected. Too often, knowledge is extracted, taken from communities, translated into academic language and published without consent or credit. Real support means protecting intellectual property, honoring collective ownership and respecting the sacred and the secret.
In South Africa, the National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act includes provisions for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits that arise from the use of indigenous biological knowledge. One case involved the San people, whose knowledge of the appetite-suppressing qualities of the Hoodia plant was used in commercial development. After years of negotiation, a benefit-sharing agreement was reached. It wasn’t perfect, but it marked a shift toward recognising that indigenous knowledge has economic as well as cultural value and that its holders deserve a stake in that value.
There’s also a need for capacity-building. Not in the sense of "training" indigenous communities, but in re-training institutions. Government bodies, NGOs and researchers must learn how to engage with indigenous governance systems respectfully, on equal terms. This is not about scaling up traditional knowledge to fit existing frameworks, but rather adjusting those frameworks to accommodate other ways of seeing and relating to the environment.
The African Model Law for the Protection of the Rights of Local Communities, Farmers and Breeders, though not widely implemented, is another step in the right direction. It was developed to help countries draft national legislation that protects the rights of local and indigenous communities over their knowledge and resources. It shifts the starting point from “How do we use this knowledge?” to “Who has the right to decide how this knowledge is used?”
True policy support is not about extracting value from indigenous systems. It’s valuing them on their own terms, protecting the people who keep them alive and giving them the space to continue evolving. That means treating indigenous communities not as stakeholders to be consulted, but as co-governors of the environments they’ve sustained for generations.