Most of us don’t go through our day thinking, “My life is connected to Indigenous rights.” But it is. The foods we eat, the pharmaceuticals & herbal products we take, and the climate we depend on are all tied to Indigenous territories and to generations of people who have cared for forests and learned how to work with plants.
In this episode, I talk with Beto Borges, Director of the Communities and Territorial Governance Initiative at Forest Trends. For more than 40 years, Beto has worked alongside Indigenous peoples and local communities across the Amazon and Latin America. He shares why Indigenous peoples are not relics of the past or romantic movie characters, but contemporary societies who hold rights, protect much of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and help keep our forests, water, and climate systems alive.
We get into why Indigenous peoples are often called “guardians of biodiversity,” the very real pressures their lands face from oil, mining, industrial agriculture, illegal logging, and narco‑trafficking, and how common stereotypes, from Hollywood to advertising, make it harder to see them as our peers instead of symbols.
Beto also breaks down “ecosystem services” in everyday language and explains why valuing biodiversity and healthy ecosystems may be more powerful in the long run than focusing on carbon markets alone.
If you care about nature, justice, climate, or simply where your food and plant‑based products come from, this conversation will give you a different lens on Indigenous peoples, why their territories matter to all of us, and what it might look like to move toward real respect and partnership.
biodiversity #indigenouspeople #indigenousrights #traditionalknowledge #ecosystemservices #carbonmarkets