Emerging Need to Sustain and Preserve the Traditional Knowledge of Indigenous Communities to Combat Climate Change

Unplanned anthropological activities are affecting the earth at all levels, causing tremendous environmental degradation and climate change. The impacts of climate change on indigenous communities have been observed worldwide, and the use of their indigenous knowledge to mitigate these impacts and promote sustainable development is now widely acknowledged. This chapter is an attempt to investigate the importance of indigenous communities' traditional knowledge to combat climate change, its inclusion in climate mitigation measures, and the urgency for its preservation and sustenance. A huge database on the ecological knowledge of indigenous communities to combat climate change was screened and analyzed to draw out the results and conclusions. The chapter highlights the strong advocacy of international organizations and researchers in adopting the indigenous communities’ traditional knowledge to combat climate change and achieve sustainable development goals. India, with a huge tribal population (84.33 million), has a rich repository of indigenous knowledge that can provide viable solutions to climate change issues. The study recommends the urgency of including traditional ecological knowledge in climate policy and the preservation and sustenance of this knowledge system for a sustainable future.