Indigenous Forest Management Emerges as a Powerful Blueprint for Climate Adaptation

Across the world’s forests, Indigenous communities have been managing landscapes for centuries using knowledge passed down through generations, and a new systematic review suggests these practices may hold critical lessons for climate change adaptation. A team of Malaysian researchers led by Azlan Abas of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, working with colleagues at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and Universiti Malaysia Sabah, conducted a comprehensive synthesis of global evidence on Indigenous and community-based forest management. Published in the journal Discover Sustainability, the review systematically analysed 59 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2025, following the PRISMA 2020 framework, the internationally recognised standard for rigorous systematic literature reviews. Their central conclusion is striking: Indigenous forest management is not merely a collection of local techniques but an integrated socio-ecological adaptation system in which adaptive capacity emerges from the interaction of ecological processes, cultural values, customary institutions, and governance arrangements.

The methodological rigour of the review underpins its findings. By applying PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the researchers ensured that study selection, screening, and analysis followed transparent and reproducible procedures, reducing the risk of bias in a field where evidence has historically been scattered across disciplines and regions. The 59 included studies were examined through thematic synthesis, a qualitative technique that identifies recurring patterns and constructs broader explanatory themes from individual case reports. This approach allowed the team to move beyond cataloguing practices in isolation and instead reveal the structural connections between what Indigenous communities do on the ground and the adaptation outcomes those actions produce. The result is one of the most coherent pictures to date of how traditional forest stewardship translates into measurable climate resilience.

The synthesis identified four dominant forest management strategies employed by Indigenous peoples worldwide. The first centres on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, often abbreviated as TEK, and its associated seasonal practices. TEK encompasses cumulative bodies of knowledge, practice, and belief about the relationships between living beings and their environment, refined over long timeframes through direct observation and experience. Seasonal practices guided by this knowledge allow communities to time harvesting, planting, and other interventions to ecological rhythms, adjusting to variability in ways that static management plans often cannot. The review found that this temporal responsiveness is a key mechanism through which TEK buffers forest systems against climate-driven uncertainty, enabling communities to detect and respond to environmental shifts long before formal monitoring systems register them.

The second strategy is community-based forest management, in which local communities hold collective responsibility for governing and using forest resources. The third is Indigenous fire management and controlled burning, a practice that has attracted global attention in recent years as catastrophic wildfires intensify. Indigenous burning regimes apply fire at carefully chosen times and intensities to reduce fuel loads, maintain habitat heterogeneity, and prevent the destructive conflagrations that unchecked fire suppression policies have sometimes enabled. The fourth strategy comprises agroforestry and sustainable harvesting systems, which integrate trees and crops in ways that diversify production, maintain canopy cover, and preserve soil and water functions. Together, these four strategies demonstrate the breadth of Indigenous practice, spanning fire regimes, tenure arrangements, knowledge systems, and production landscapes.

Perhaps the most consequential finding of the review is that these practices consistently contribute to four key adaptation outcomes. The first is enhanced ecosystem resilience, meaning forests managed under Indigenous systems are better able to absorb disturbances such as drought, pests, and storms without collapsing into degraded states. The second is reduced climate-related risk, as practices like controlled burning directly lower the probability of extreme fire events while seasonal management reduces exposure to crop and resource failures. The third is improved livelihood sustainability, because diversified agroforestry and regulated harvesting provide reliable food, medicine, and income even as climatic conditions shift. The fourth is biodiversity conservation, with Indigenous-managed forests frequently supporting richer assemblages of species than intensively managed or abandoned landscapes. The convergence of these outcomes across independent studies from different regions and ecosystems lends considerable weight to the review’s argument.

The researchers frame their central insight around the concept of a socio-ecological system, a framework in ecology and sustainability science that treats human societies and their environments as a single, tightly coupled entity rather than separate domains. Within this framing, the adaptive capacity of Indigenous forest management does not reside in any single technique. Instead, it emerges from interactions among ecological processes, the cultural values that motivate stewardship, the customary institutions that regulate resource use, and the governance arrangements that grant communities legitimate authority over their territories. This integrated structure explains why removing one component, for example by severing a community’s land rights or disrupting knowledge transmission, can degrade the whole system’s ability to adapt, even if the underlying ecological knowledge remains intact.

The review is also explicit about the conditions that determine whether these systems succeed or falter. Effectiveness, the authors found, is influenced by ecological thresholds, meaning there are limits beyond which climate stress can overwhelm even well-managed systems. Continuity of knowledge transmission matters profoundly, since TEK depends on intergenerational learning between elders and younger community members, a chain that colonisation, urbanisation, and cultural disruption have broken in many places. Secure land tenure emerged as another decisive factor, because communities facing uncertain or contested claims to their forests have weakened incentives and diminished authority to manage them for the long term. Recognition of Indigenous governance authority by state institutions completes the picture, ensuring that community decisions about burning, harvesting, and conservation carry legal weight rather than being overridden by external agencies.

Collaboration between Indigenous knowledge systems and scientific or policy frameworks offers a promising path forward, but the review delivers a cautionary note on how such integration is pursued. When done well, through genuine co-production of knowledge and shared decision-making, collaboration can strengthen adaptation outcomes, combining the fine-grained, place-based sensitivity of TEK with the analytical reach of formal science and the implementation capacity of policy institutions. When done badly, however, tokenistic integration may actively undermine Indigenous institutions and erode the very adaptive capacity it claims to harness. Extractive consultation processes that take knowledge without granting authority, or blanket policies imposed without regard to local governance, can leave communities worse off. The distinction between equitable partnership and superficial inclusion is, in the authors’ assessment, central to the future of forest-based climate adaptation.

The significance of the review extends well beyond academic debate. Indigenous peoples manage extensive forest landscapes worldwide, and the fate of vast carbon stores and biodiversity hotspots is bound up in how those lands are governed. As climate change accelerates, the review positions Indigenous forest management as a place-based, relational, and multi-scalar approach to adaptation, one that operates simultaneously at the level of individual practices, community institutions, and broader governance frameworks. The authors argue that strengthening Indigenous rights, supporting governance autonomy, and promoting equitable knowledge integration are essential prerequisites for effective, just, and sustainable forest-based adaptation. For policymakers searching for scalable climate solutions, the message is that the blueprint may already exist, refined over generations in the world’s forests, and that the task now is to protect, empower, and learn from the communities who hold it.

Subject of Research: Indigenous peoples' forest management practices for climate change adaptation

Article Title: Indigenous peoples’ forest management practices for climate change adaptation: a systematic literature review

Article References: Abas, A., Rahman, A. H. A., Juhari, M. L., Echoh, D. U., & Jamru, L. R. (2026). Indigenous peoples’ forest management practices for climate change adaptation: a systematic literature review. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04950-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04950-8

Keywords: Indigenous forest management, climate change adaptation, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, community-based forest management, controlled burning, agroforestry, biodiversity conservation, socio-ecological systems, land tenure, forest resilience, PRISMA, sustainable harvesting