ABSTRACT
Indigenous peoples and local communities represent a major but neglected category of actors in global environmental governance. In a nutshell, indigenous peoples were defined by the United Nations in the 1980s as those human groups who have a historical continuity in a territory, a distinct culture and who recognize themselves as indigenous. This comprises up to 350 million people worldwide, 70 percent of them living in Asia. They occupy 22 percent of the world’s land area. Local communities is a broader term sometimes used as a way to avoid the controversy over who is or is not indigenous. It commonly refers to communities embodying traditional lifestyles in close contact with their natural environment.
