At a Glance/Main Messages · There are approximately 300 million indigenous peoples worldwide. Although they make up roughly 4.5 percent of the global population, they account for about 10 percent of the poor, with nearly 80 percent of indigenous people living in Asia. Improving their situation will require both widespread and sustainable economic growth as well as strategies to address multiple sources of disadvantage. · The World Bank is working actively and globally with indigenous peoples on a number of issues directly affecting them, including climate change. · Indigenous peoples are distinct communities: the land on which they live and the natural resources on which they depend are inextricably linked to their identities and cultures. Approach The World Bank seeks to position excluded groups, such as the indigenous, at the center of the development agenda. This includes: 1. Strengthening the policy and institutional frameworks affecting indigenous peoples and their relations with other members of society; 2. Building indigenous peoples’ capacity for self-development, based upon their cultural heritage and knowledge; 3. Demonstrating the important role that indigenous peoples can play in the management of fragile ecosystems and biodiversity conservation; and, 4. Disseminating experience and lessons learned from such indigenous development initiatives to national governments and the international donor community. Direct Engagement Over past years, the World Bank has engaged directly with indigenous leaders and their representative Indigenous Peoples Organizations (IPOs). The Bank participates each year in a number of high-level international indigenous peoples’ fora, including the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York. In building wider alliances with the international indigenous community, the Bank has collaborated with various IPOs in developing countries. A number of World Bank-led initiatives (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility; Forest Investment Program; Development Marketplace) provide direct grants to indigenous organizations to strengthen their capacity in areas of forest and climate change. Another initiative, Climate Change Impacts on Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Knowledge, analyzes the impact of climate change on indigenous peoples, identifies practices by indigenous peoples that minimize the adverse impacts of climate change, and strengthens indigenous peoples’ capacity to participate in the formulation of national and international public policies regarding climate change. Results The World Bank published a study on Indigenous Peoples, Poverty, and Development in 2010, which gave a "global snapshot" of indicators for indigenous peoples vis-à-vis national demographic averages. The report considers how social conditions have evolved in seven countries (Central African Republic, China, Congo, Gabon, India, Laos, and Vietnam) from 2005 to 2010, the first half of the UN's Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The study finds that indigenous peoples worldwide continue to be among the poorest of the poor and suffer from higher poverty, lower education, and a greater incidence of disease and discrimination than other groups. The second High-Level Direct Dialogue with representatives of the global indigenous community was held in May, 2011. The dialogue was designed to focus on issues of import to indigenous peoples and reflect their priorities. Among the issues raised by indigenous leaders was the need for engagement with the Bank at the regional and country levels where the Bank finances its projects and engages with governments. Participants agreed to establish a formal platform for regular dialogue between the World Bank and indigenous peoples. Following this agreement, the third High-Level Direct Dialogue was held in Durban, South Africa, during the COP17 climate change talks in December 2011. Indigenous peoples are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, given that they often live in environmentally sensitive areas (e.g., the Arctic region, tropical forests, coastal zones, mountains, deserts, etc.), and depend primarily on surrounding biodiversity for subsistence as well as cultural survival. At the same time, indigenous peoples hold traditional knowledge that may be critical to climate change adaptation. The Bank aims to build on indigenous peoples’ knowledge when assisting countries in developing strategies to adapt to changing environmental patterns and conditions. The indigenous peoples issues in the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Land Degradation) agenda revolve around providing information to indigenous peoples about REDD, involving them in REDD preparedness, design and implementation, learning from indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge, ensuring that REDD design supports rather than undermines customary rights to land and natural resources, and incorporates benefit sharing systems so that indigenous peoples benefit from REDD. There is now a better understanding that the REDD mechanisms need to properly address the challenges regarding land and resources as well as recognition of indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems, as witnessed in the provisions of the December 2010 Cancun decision on REDD. Related Links www.worldbank.org/indigenouspeoples www.worldbank.org/socialdevelopment Contacts: Karolina Ordon, (202) 458-5971, kordon@worldbank.org Updated March 2012 | 
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