any grand declarations and global treaties crafted in the marble halls of international summits evaporate upon contact with the earth. Policies crafted on a global scale rarely survive the descent into local realities. First, they weaken in translation, leaving regional and national implementation starved of power, resources and genuine voice. The missing link is painfully clear now. To truly understand how nature works and how humanity has messed with it over the years, we need to talk to those who can still hear the land speak, those who live closest to the land and the rivers and are always watching the skies. In the quiet pulse of ancient rhythms, where winds carry news across vast plains, animals signal seasonal shifts long before instruments detect them. Stars map the seasons with great precision. There resides a wisdom that modern science is only beginning to recognise as essential. These are not alternatives to be selectively sampled or archived; they are accelerants, capable of igniting faster, more enduring and more equitable solutions to a crisis that demands both urgency and depth. The Global Outlook Report (GEO-7) explicitly identifies indigenous and local knowledge systems as important for successful restoration, adaptation and just transitions, and has urged their meaningful integration alongside whole-of-society approaches to transform the economy, energy, food and waste systems.

“Indigenous knowledge is old but powerful. For years, we have heard stories of how the land speaks, how animals behave and how winds listen... Our methods are rooted in ecological understanding, which might not have the same language we humans use. That is one of the reasons that many animals facing the threat of extinction are still protected in some indigenous communities. Indigenous knowledge is not an alternative, rather an accelerant,” said Louisa April, from Botswana, at the United Nations Climate Assembly in a side event.

This accelerant works best when strengthened with local governance. When mayors, village councils and community elders collaborate with indigenous knowledge holders and governments, they bridge the widening gap between satellite-derived quantitative data and the qualitative, place-based wisdom that emerges from lifelong intimacy with a landscape. Together, they can restore mangroves as living, breathing shields against storm surges. They can observe closely and craft early-warning systems drawn from bird migrations, river moods and subtle changes in plant behaviour. Such knowledge co-production gives us climate strategies that are not only technically sound and cost-effective but deeply just, culturally rooted and resilient precisely where vulnerability is the greatest, on the front lines where people face the first and fiercest impacts of drought, flood, heat and sea-level rise. GEO-7 emphasises that leaning on nature-based solutions, backed by diverse knowledge systems including Indigenous and local knowledge, can deliver trillions in additional global GDP by 2070 while averting millions of deaths and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and hunger.

Leaning on nature-based solutions, backed by diverse knowledge systems including Indigenous and local knowledge, can deliver trillions in additional global GDP by 2070 while averting millions of deaths and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and hunger.

Yet systemic barriers, structural, financial, and attitudinal, persist with stubborn force. Balakshar Qazi, mayor of Turbat in Balochistan, spoke with an urgency and clarity at the United Nations Climate Assembly’s session Beat the Heat. He said, “During the 2022 floods, there were some areas that only the local governments could identify, but they were not included in the national relief plans. Until and unless you are able to implement national policies at the local level and translate them into practical solutions, they have no utility. It is important that local governments are strengthened and local leaders are trained to find regional solutions to these climate-related disasters. In some countries, mayors can access global funding. Not so in Pakistan. This needs to change. We have to empower people at the grassroots.”

Juressa Lee, representing indigenous major groups at the United Nations Climate Assembly, demanded more than token inclusion: “The local communities around the world hold knowledge systems from centuries that inherently protect nature. Even ‘protect nature’ is the wrong phrase; we rather live with it. We not only need to include indigenous knowledge to fight climate change, but also to understand that we must transform the structure of our society to truly grasp what coexistence means. Indigenous knowledge cannot be treated as a commodity to consume. Rather, we need to have a deep understanding of it.”

The global voices bring our attention towards empowering communities rather than forcing them to leave their lands. We find examples of such communities in Pakistan that need immediate protection. For generations, the Mohana (also known as Mohannas or “bird people”), an indigenous fisher-folk community, have lived in floating houseboat villages, their entire existence woven into the lake’s life. Some oral histories trace their lineage to the ancient Indus Valley civilisation; others simply say they have always been there, reading the water’s language with intimate precision: the patterns of fish schools signaling lake health, the behaviour of migratory birds foretelling seasonal change, the subtle shifts in water colour and clarity guiding sustainable harvests. Their traditional fishing practices, using handwoven nets, selective catches and seasonal rest periods, once sustained abundant fisheries and supported vast flocks of flamingos, pelicans and other water birds that turned Manchar into one of South Asia’s premier wetland spectacles. “You cannot explain to someone who cannot see what light is. The capital-driven world and governments have been unable to understand that people have a spiritual relationship to their environment because that’s the right way to live as a part of nature,” said Christian Harpe, an indigenous advocate.

Acknowledging this wisdom could mean genuine co-management of Manchar Lake: integrating Mohana monitoring practices into pollution control and early-warning systems, reviving traditional wetland buffers to absorb flood surges and centring their input in restoration efforts.

The writer is a freelance climate journalist from Lahore