Statistics seemed to pop up everywhere. Versions of it have been cited in UN negotiations, on protest banners, in 186 peer-reviewed scientific papers — even by director James Cameron while promoting his “Avatar” films. The exact wording varied, but the statement was this: 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is protected by indigenous populations.
However, when scientists investigated the origins of this claim, they found nothing, they note.
In September, the magazine reported that the much-cited claim was “an unsubstantiated statistic” that was unsupported by any real data and could jeopardize the very indigenous-led conservation efforts it was cited to support.
The basic question: Why didn’t anyone report it?
Indigenous communities play “crucial roles” in conserving biodiversity, the commentary says, but the 80% claim is simply “wrong” and risks undermining their credibility.
The carefully worded article, written by 13 authors, including three o’s, was developed over five years. But it also raised other questions: how did an unsubstantiated fact become so widespread – and what other inaccuracies were circulating.
“There were political reports that used it. There were scientific reports. It has been cited in more than 180 scientific publications,” says Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, ethnobiologist at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and one of the authors of the article.
The material has been verified as “true” by a fact-checking organization and has been cited by numerous news organizations.
Fernández-Llamazares emphasized that he did not blame those who used this figure. Instead, he said, “What we’re asking is: How come this figure hasn’t been challenged for so many years?”
The statement about biodiversity is based only on assumptions
To verify the claim, scientists scoured decades of literature and citations. They found nothing resembling a real calculation. Instead, UN and World Bank reports from the early 2000s seem to have popularized it.
In turn, they cited an encyclopedia article on occupation by indigenous populations and research showing that some indigenous tribes in the Philippines “maintain more than 80% of their original high-biodiversity forest cover.”
Perhaps, however, the statistic should have raised eyebrows to begin with. Despite recent advances in measurement, biodiversity is still difficult to define, let alone quantify and count.
Millions of species are not even described or their species status is debated.
“The 80% claim is based on two assumptions: that it can be divided into countable units and that these can be spatially mapped globally. Neither of these achievements is possible,” the authors wrote in the journal Nature.
