This article is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
On the second day of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples (UNPFII), experts called attention to the deep links between the health of indigenous peoples and nature, highlighting how environmental degradation, mining activities and climate change exacerbate health inequalities.
The forum’s focus on Indigenous health follows new research by Jeffrey Ross, a descendant of the Standing Rock Sioux and former Permanent Forum member, which argues that the United Nations agency’s fragmented approach – addressing health, environment and land rights through separate mandates – has “consistently failed Indigenous peoples”. The study, released to coincide with the opening of the forum’s 25th session, frames environmental degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss not as external pressures but as “direct manifestations of injury” to indigenous well-being.
“For Indigenous peoples, health is deeply tied to the health of the land,” Ross says. “It’s not just access to clinics and medicine; it’s about clean water, healthy forests, traditional food, and the ability to maintain cultural practices. When the environment is destroyed, whether through mining, deforestation, pollution or climate change, it directly impacts people’s health.”
At the forum, many Indigenous leaders spoke about how the growing environmental crisis has increased the urgency to address the health impacts on Indigenous peoples. “Climate change is another threat to our health,” said Minnie Gray, former executive director of the Nunavik Regional Health and Human Services Board of Northern Canada. “We are people of the Arctic. We need the ice, the snow, and the wildlife that depend on it. Our hunters and people depend on these animals to sustain our food systems and nutrition.”
A second study, also presented at the forum by former forum permanent members Haniye Moghani, Hannah McGlade and Geoffrey Ross, examines how armed conflict disproportionately impacts indigenous peoples, who are often driven by competition for natural resources. This leads to the displacement of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and territories, reduced social and cultural cohesion, resource exploitation and destruction of agricultural livelihoods, and an intergenerational health crisis.
“These impacts exacerbate existing inequalities, which is why indigenous communities are often hit hardest,” he explained. “In that sense, environmental damage is inseparable from health, and it is the main driver of health.”
By focusing on indigenous health separately from territories, waters, food systems and culture, global health efforts fail to address the structural drivers of health problems faced by indigenous peoples, such as land dispossession, environmental degradation, cultural destruction and erosion of indigenous governance, Ross said.
Jeffrey Ross speaks at UNPFII Carrie Johnson/Grist
The study highlights that climate change is acting as a severe “risk multiplier” that intensifies pressures across biological, ecological and social systems, disproportionately impacting indigenous peoples. Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods worsen water quality and availability, increasing the risk of water-borne diseases and impairing sanitation. Additionally, the climate crisis is having a serious impact on the mental health of Indigenous communities. Evidence shows that climate-related disasters and environmental loss are associated with increases in depression, substance abuse, and new diagnoses such as “ecological grief” and “climate anxiety,” especially among indigenous youth who are witnessing changes to their ancestral ecosystems.
In Alaska, for example, severe storms like Typhoon Halong have devastated coastal villages, resulting in the displacement of thousands of indigenous people due to climate change. These displacements, driven by coastal erosion and permafrost thaw, cut communities from traditional food harvesting and weather forecasting systems, exacerbating health vulnerabilities.
For example, biodiversity degradation can affect food availability, resulting in nutritional inequalities, chronic disease, and mental distress. Brazil’s Munduruku Territory is one of the most affected lands in the country by illegal mining, and even after government-led operations to stop illegal mining in the region, the indigenous Munduruku people still face many health problems.
Community members have reported a wide range of illnesses associated with mercury pollution and ecological destruction caused by mining, including diarrhea, itching, influenza, fever, polio, and brain disease.
“The situation is even more serious for indigenous peoples who are self-isolating and making initial contacts,” said Ginny Alba Medina, an indigenous leader and lawyer with OPIAC, the national organization of Colombia’s Amazonian tribes. “For them, the right to health begins with absolute respect for the principle of non-contact. Invasions from outside can trigger deadly epidemics for which they have no immune defenses. Allowing mining activities, armed presence or territorial pressure within their territories poses an imminent threat to their physical and cultural survival.”
“What is missing is a more relational approach that includes land, culture and self-determination as central to health,” Ross says. “Going forward, UN agencies will need to work in a less fragmented and more coordinated manner. They cannot improve the health of indigenous peoples in isolation; they will need to coordinate efforts across sectors and support indigenous leadership within these systems.”
Weeks before the forum began at United Nations Headquarters in New York, women and children from the indigenous Batwa people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) suffered a new attack by armed groups believed to belong to the Fluve Congo Alliance and the March 23 Movement rebel groups. These incidents, which occurred in South Kivu province on March 5, are connected to a larger pattern of targeted violence against the Batwa people to gain control of their land and natural resources.
Conflicts in indigenous territories are inherently environmental and health crises. Armed conflicts are often driven by competition over natural resources, making indigenous lands strategic battlegrounds.
Analysts say the escalating armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is having a significant, and often overlooked, impact on the environment. They highlight that deforestation has increased sharply since it began in late 2021, with an estimated 3,019 acres of tree cover lost in 2023. From 2019 to 2022, average annual forest loss was 1,410 acres.
Advocates at the conference discussed how conflict limits access to indigenous peoples’ lands, as they often have to flee violence to protect themselves. But similar to biodiversity degradation, which is sometimes caused by conflict, without access to their land, indigenous communities can struggle to gain access to nutritious food, which can lead to health impacts and weakening social and spiritual cohesion, Ross’s research on indigenous health points out.
“These conflicts have immediate and long-term health effects,” Ross said. “Communities are forced off their land, access to health care is cut off, and people face persistent trauma and stress. At the same time, the environment is damaged or destroyed, including contaminated water, deforestation, and loss of food systems, further compromising health.”
This is the situation facing the Ngāti Tipa people of the Waikato-Tainui Confederation of Tauranganui Marae in New Zealand.
“My great-grandmother said that all the water surrounding our community was once clean,” said Em Haley Kukutai Walker, an artist from Ngharti Tipa and a native of the community. “We didn’t have a lot of flooding and our fisheries were healthy. Now, with rising sea levels in the river, the salinity is increasing, so the fish are dying and moving elsewhere.”
Indigenous leaders at the forum, including Wilton Littlechild, a Cree chief and treaty rights lawyer, argued that legal recognition of their territory is a fundamental prerequisite for protecting biodiversity and Indigenous health.
“Indigenous peoples have these treaties (as well as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) that give them the tools to protect their health,” Littlechild said.
This call is echoed by the WHO in its draft Global Plan of Action (GPA) on Indigenous Health, which calls for support for “indigenous-led ecosystem management and nature-based approaches to protecting health.” On 5 February, the WHO Executive Board decided to postpone consideration of the draft GPA until 2027 to allow more consultation time.
Advocates say indigenous health cannot be completely separated from land ownership, biodiversity, food sovereignty and self-determination, and this needs to be recognized by institutions such as the United Nations and WHO.
Leaders have warned that the world’s climate and biodiversity goals cannot be met without indigenous peoples. Ruth Mercredi, an elder and traditional healer from Yellowknife, Canada, said during a session on the link between health and state obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that governments need to start prioritizing the health of Indigenous peoples.
“Today, we are fed up with water, food and air,” Mercredi said. “Whereas before we didn’t have to worry about what we put in our bodies, now we have to.”
