An estimated 300 million indigenous people inhabit more than 70 countries worldwide. They live in a wide range of ecosystems -from polar regions and deserts to the savannahs and tropical forests. There is a remarkable overlap between the global mappings of world's areas of biological megadiversity and areas of high cultural and linguistic diversity. Unfortunately, these areas of biological megadiversity are the ones in which biodiversity loss has been the most dramatic. These areas host the world's highest concentrations of linguistically and culturally diverse human groups - the indigenous people, who have traditionally lived in close contact with their ecological habitats.
Poverty also tends to have a disproportionately severe effect on indigenous people.
They tend to be among the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable and the most deprived groups of society. There is basic consensus that indigenous peoples possess detailed and accurate knowledge of their environments and that this knowledge represents an essential resource for efforts aimed at preserving biodiversity and promoting sustainability, both locally and globally. As global socio-economic factors disrupt traditional ways of life, such knowledge is being rapidly lost, causing poverty and over exploitation of the environment by both local groups and outside forces. External pressures also promote tensions and conflicts over indigenous peoples' land rights and impinge on their human rights - including linguistic, cultural and resource rights. These global forces also foster change in perceptions and attitudes of the indigenous people often leading to the abandonment of traditional knowledge and behaviours and of the languages that are the repositories and means of transmission of such knowledge.