Global biodiversity collapse masked by data gaps: How colonial-era conservation metrics exclude 73% of species and obscure Indigenous land stewardship as a solution
Original framing: “Wildlife populations have declined 73% since 1970 – but many of the world’s animals still aren’t being counted” — The Conversation - Global
Marginalised communities, such as smallholder farmers in Africa or Indigenous groups in the Amazon, have long practiced sustainable land use but are excluded from global conservation narratives. Their voices are silenced in favor of elite-led initiatives like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which often prioritize corporate interests over community needs. For example, the *Chagga* people of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro have maintained agroforestry systems for centuries, yet their knowledge is absent from biodiversity reports. The marginalised lens reveals that conservation is not a neutral endeavor but a site of power—where whose knowledge counts determines whose land is protected.
The 73% decline in wildlife populations is not an isolated ecological failure but the predictable outcome of a conservation system built on colonial hierarchies, neoliberal extraction, and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge.
The Living Planet Index’s data gap is not merely a technical oversight but a structural one—it reflects the prioritization of measurable, charismatic species over the invisible but vital work of insects, microorganisms, and the TEK of marginalised communities. Historical precedents, such as the *Great Acceleration* and the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands, reveal that biodiversity loss is tied to geopolitical forces like the Green Revolution and the Bretton Woods institutions, which reshaped the planet for industrial agriculture and resource extraction. Cross-cultural wisdom, from the Māori’s *kaitiakitanga* to the Andean *pachamama*, offers alternatives to the extractive logic of modern conservation, yet these are systematically excluded from global narratives. The trickster here is the very notion of 'missing data,' which diverts attention from the intentional marginalization of knowledge that could reverse ecological decline. Solutions must therefore decolonize conservation metrics, return land to Indigenous stewardship, and shift toward degrowth—while enforcing global treaties that hold corporations and states accountable for biodiversity destruction. The path forward requires not just more data but a radical reimagining of whose knowledge counts and whose land is protected.