ǀUseb and others emphasised that indigenous peoples were often not heard in water policy forums, despite centuries or even millennia of successful water conservation. Dushanbe was an opportunity to turn that around, he said.

Elena Konoplianko, an indigenous woman from Eastern Siberia, explained how her people had survived on inland fishing since time immemorial. ‘Now the rivers are contaminated from mines and also the melting of permafrost, the collapse of the land. Fish used to be plentiful but now we face an uncertain future,’ she lamented.

Yolanda Lopez Maldonado, a Yucatec Maya hydrologist, amplified this point. ‘The key for us is that indigenous peoples need to be at the table’, she said. ‘We have solutions, we have experience. We need to be in a dialogue with decision-makers’.

She said that it was important to move past the view that scientists needed to explain water to rural communities. ‘It is these communities, with their own languages and knowledge systems, who have details about how the hydrological system operates and the governance of water resources. What is needed is more dialogue and trust-building’, she said.

The forum highlighted the natural connections between the Water Action Decade, the Decade on Ecosystems Restoration and the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. FAO colleagues recalled that water was integral to food systems and food security. There is an opportunity to have water as the connector, across government, across sectors and across society.

The year 2026 will be the International Decade of Rangelands and Pastoralism, a topic of importance for many countries, notably in Central Asia. Yon Fernandez-Larrinoa from FAO noted the importance of the global coalition of member states and indigenous peoples working on indigenous sustainable food systems.

Chief Viacheslav Shadrin closed the forum with this saying in the Yukhagir language from Western Siberia, ‘We say that both people and water are part of nature. We need to respect nature. When we try to control nature and water, it ends sadly’.

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Photo: Viacheslav Shadrin, from the Aborigen Forum in the Russian Federation, speaks on Arctic water issues at the forum