Indigenous Peoples and their Knowledge Systems offer a holistic understanding of climate change causes, impacts, and time-tested adaptation, mitigation,and resilience responses grounded in millennia of systematic observation and intergenerational transmission. Despite being disproportionately affected by climate change due to historical and contemporary colonial dispossession and structural inequality, Indigenous Peoples are not merely vulnerable populations—they are frontline climate leaders whose territorial governance and sciences are essential to understanding and responding to the climate crisis.
Yet Indigenous Peoples and their Knowledge Systems remain largely marginalised in global climate science and policy processes, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This policy document addresses this marginalisation by providing a practice-oriented guide for ethicaland equitable engagement with Indigenous Knowledge Systems within the IPCC.