IAS_Box 2.6_134;135

Box 2.6. Land managed, used or owned by Indigenous Peoples and local communities: A global assessment of trends and status of alien and invasive alien species
Indigenous Peoples and local communities (i.e., typically ethnic groups who are descended from and identify with the original inhabitants of a given region) manage or have tenure rights over a large area of land. For Indigenous Peoples only, it is estimated that they manage or have tenure rights for at least 28 per cent of the total land area worldwide (Garnett et al., 2018). Their land (hereafter called “Indigenous lands”) intersects with 40 per cent of the world’s protected areas and hosts higher amounts of natural areas compared to other lands (Garnett et al., 2018). Although Indigenous lands are often less inhabited and more remote than other lands, they do not escape anthropogenic pressures. It is unsurprising to find many alien and invasive alien species on lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities and indeed has been frequently reported from such lands all over the world (Gautam et al., 2013; Kannan et al., 2016; Ksenofontov et al., 2019; Miranda-Chumacero et al., 2012; Thorn, 2019). To date, no study has investigated the distribution of alien and invasive alien species on Indigenous lands.
The following analysis was conducted to deepen the understanding about the distribution of alien and invasive alien species on Indigenous land. As described in section 2.1.4, occurrences of populations of more than 17,000 established alien species worldwide were obtained using occurrence records provided by GBIF and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS). These point-wise occurrences were integrated with a spatial layer of land managed, used or owned by Indigenous Peoples (Garnett et al., 2018) to determine the total number of established alien and invasive alien species recorded on Indigenous lands.
This analysis revealed that, in total, 6,351 established alien species have been recorded on Indigenous lands, which is 34 per cent of all established alien species recorded worldwide in this data set. The number of invasive alien species according to the GRIIS database (Pagad et al., 2022) amounts to 2,355 (56 per cent of the total number globally) on these lands, although it could not be determined whether the invasive alien species pose any impact on these lands (see Chapter 4, section 4.6 for a detailed assessment of impacts by Indigenous Peoples and local communities). The number of established alien species recorded on Indigenous lands is highly correlated with the total number of established alien species of the same country (t-test: t=12.8, df=77, p<0.001, r=0.82). That is, in countries with high numbers of established alien species, those numbers are also high on Indigenous lands. However, the number of established alien species recorded on Indigenous land is on average consistently lower compared to those numbers recorded on other lands also after taking area into account (Figure 2.29). Hotspots of occurrences with high established alien species numbers on Indigenous lands were found all over the world but particularly in Australia (2,624 alien species), United States (1,719), Mexico (746), Sweden (690) and Russia (650). The same sequence applies to invasive alien species numbers, although at a lower magnitude: Australia (1,172 invasive alien species), United States (691), Mexico (481), Sweden (441), and Russia (436) (Figure 2.29).
An analysis of the trends of alien and invasive alien species on Indigenous lands is currently missing due to a lack of data, but it seems very likely that the number of established alien species on Indigenous lands increased as observed for other regions (Figures 2.4 and 2.26) and so are the impacts they cause. A clear knowledge gap exists for information about the trends and status of invasive alien species in coastal waters managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.