Using an inclusive bioeconomy framework in support of indigenous peoples and local communities living in mountains

Abstract

Mountains are intimately connected with the current health and future wellbeing of people and nature on Earth; highlands harbor over half of all global biodiversity hotspots, and billions of people depend on freshwater originating from the world’s “water towers”. Around 500 million people dwell in global mountains with the majority self-identifying as indigenous peoples and/or members of local communities (IPLC). IPLC’s reciprocal relations with lands and lifeways are powerful global drivers for sustaining nature, yet actions to fully recognize the rights of IPLC and support conservation of mountain ecosystems and biocultural diversity remain limited. To address these issues, recent proposals suggest using an inclusive bioeconomy framework (BE) to coordinate international efforts that seek to partner with and support mountain-dwelling IPLC. Originally, bioeconomy work focused on developing bio-based resources to reduce fossil fuel use; today, researchers advocate for a more inclusive BE that comprehensively addresses: biodiversity protection; biocultural conservation; circular economy principles; biotechnology innovation; digital integration; sustainable fair trade; and social equity and justice. But no nation has any form of a BE plan that addresses IPLC living in mountains. In this paper, we specifically focus on mountain-dwelling IPLC in the Global South; this is where the majority of montane IPLC live and where environmental and social sustainability problems are most challenging. We review recent publications and survey ongoing field work to better understand how each of the seven inclusive BE sectors may strengthen support for montane IPLC to reach multiple goals around protecting nature and culture. We find five general trends along with six lessons learned from the literature that are documented across all BE sectors: recognize IPLC rights to self-determination; work to establish equitable partnerships with IPLC; integrate projects across multiple sectors and scales; build knowledge through better data; increase institutional and financial support from governments and the private sector; and substantially scale up efforts for every BE sector. Inclusive BE is not a panacea, but it does offer a more holistic approach for researchers and experts, government workers, and others to reframe and deepen their work as they learn to fully recognize, engage, and support IPLC co-partners.

1 Introduction

The ecological health of global mountains today is intimately connected with the current health and future wellbeing of people and nature on Earth. Mountains cover about 17%–20% of the planet’s terrestrial surface (Körner et al., 2021), yet highlands harbor over half of all global biodiversity hotspots and 30% of Key Biodiversity Areas (Payne et al., 2020). Montane regions provide disproportionately rich habitats for birds, mammals, and amphibians (Rahbek et al., 2019), and mountain ecosystems offer an array of important ecosystem services. Humans living in highlands have developed rich biocultural traditions and lifeways over centuries and today, some 500 million people dwell at 1500 m or more above sea level, about 6.5% of all people on Earth (Tremblay and Ainslie, 2021). Links between people and nature are found everywhere in mountains. Upstream, highlands sequester a significant amount of carbon in soils and vegetation that need to be protected for climate change mitigation (Zomer et al., 2023), while downstream, some 20%–25% of people on Earth depend on freshwater originating from the world’s “water towers” (Viviroli et al., 2020).

Yet, global montane regions are under increasing pressures from anthropogenic climate change and land-use patterns. Mountains are warming faster than other areas of Earth (Pepin et al., 2025); this is leading to irreversible loss of glacial mass (Van Tricht et al., 2025), and increasing likelihood of changes in montane groundwater availability (Somers and McKenzie, 2020) and carbon storage in montane grasslands and shrublands (Ward et al., 2014) into the future.

Mountain people are already impacted by these changes. Ongoing montane land-use changes including loss of forests (Chen et al., 2024), habitat fragmentation (Theobald et al., 2024), and human resource extraction pressures inside existing protected areas (Li G. et al., 2026), are combining with climate impacts to drive general ecological degradation and increasing food insecurity for mountain people (Romeo et al., 2020). While impacts are not homogeneous across all global mountains, these trends are especially concerning in the Global South where the majority of montane people live (Dragonetti et al., 2024).

Many of Earth’s mountain-dwelling residents self-identify as indigenous, though there is little disaggregated data showing what percent of specific mountain regional populations identify as such. Across the great diversity of thousands of groups of indigenous peoples, there are multiple ways to describe “indigenous” (see discussion in Garnett et al., 2018; Reyes-Garcia et al., 2026). In this paper, we use a slightly modified definition from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (IPBES, 2019): Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) are individuals and communities who self-identify as Indigenous and/or are members of local communities that maintain inter-generational reciprocal relations with nature through livelihoods, cultural identity, institutions, and ecological knowledge. For IPLC living in mountains, highlands not only uphold daily life, they also undergird identities and lifeways.

Over the last decade, research has clarified that IPLC’s reciprocal relations with lands and lifeways are powerful drivers for sustaining nature and people. Over 25% of global lands are managed by IPLC in multiple ways that result in effective conservation of biodiversity (Garnett et al., 2018). Compared to nation-state management, IPLC lands often exhibit greater ecological intactness (Fa et al., 2020), less deforestation (Sze et al., 2022), and effective provision of ecosystem services (Martin-Lopez et al., 2019; Khosravi and Escobedo, 2025). While recent research has begun to quantify the value of IPLC land management, indigenous peoples have also been slowly gaining greater international support since the 1989 International Labor Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 and the 2007 United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. IPLC have contributed to the UN Conventions on Climate Change and Biodiversity, are included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and are active in multiple international research and advocacy partnerships (Grumbine and Xu, 2021a). Scholars suggest that long-term global conservation goals cannot be met without wider acknowledgement, knowledge co-production, and sustained support with and for IPLC (Brondizio et al., 2021; Zheng et al., 2021).

Despite advances in research and contributions by IPLC to long-term conservation planning, current on-the-ground actions to conserve mountain ecosystems and cultures remain limited (IPBES, 2024; UNEP, 2025). To address these issues, since 2016, members of the Mountain Partnership, an international alliance of over 70 countries and 600+ members hosted by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) (https://www.fao.org/mountain-partnership/about/vision-and-mission/en), have been developing a global-scale Mountain Futures Initiative with goals to enhance the ecological health of mountain ecosystems while supporting sustainable lifeways for highlands dwellers (Grumbine and Xu, 2021a). Recent actions include defining and beginning implementation of a Mountain Futures Action Plan linked to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) (Grumbine and Su, 2023). Today, there exist proposals to extend these efforts by employing an inclusive bioeconomy framework (hereafter inclusive BE) as the basis for ongoing coordination and implementation of international field research projects that seek to support and partner with mountain-dwelling IPLC (Xu and Grumbine, 2026). In early 2026, the Mountain Partnership released the Andorra Proclamation updating actions in mountains out beyond 2030 including efforts to accelerate a sustainable circular bioeconomy. In this paper, we review recent publications and ongoing work toward these goals, and then consider how employing an inclusive BE may strengthen and speed up support for montane IPLC into the future.

2 Defining an inclusive bioeconomy framework for IPLC living in mountains

Multiple versions of BE have been in existence for 15–20 years. From the beginning, these plans framed sustainable economic development within greater technological use of biological resources from a supply-side perspective on sustainability (Bugge et al., 2016; de Melo et al., 2022). Initial BE efforts focused on developing bio-based resources to reduce fossil fuel use; innovative biotechnologies to ‘green’ industrial production were then added in. Some years later, circular economy planning to reduce waste and pollution in production cycles became part of BE. Today, with accelerating climate impacts and unsustainable human use of nature becoming more evident and researchers advocating for a more comprehensive, holistic approach, (Muscat et al., 2021; Ibarra et al., 2023b), BE is beginning to include protection/restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Virgolino and Holden, 2025). There is accelerating international movement to elevate the social aspects of BE—greater support for local livelihoods, traditional ecological knowledge, land tenure, fair trade, social justice and equity—to a level equal to economics, technology, and biodiversity conservation (Astolfi et al., 2025; Kenter et al., 2025). This movement goes beyond mainstream thinking to include recognition of the legal rights of nature (Arreaga-Vicuña et al., 2026) and a reframing of human-only concepts of value and empowerment (Skene, 2022).

As of 2026, 76 countries have some form of a BE plan. However, even the most advanced of these national BE efforts does not adequately capture a full range of social and ecological conditions (Ramcilovic- Suominen et al., 2022; Eversberg et al., 2023). And to our knowledge, none of these plans include any focus on IPLC in general, or IPLC living in mountains in particular. Yet, transcultural work toward meeting sustainability goals using various sectors of BE is increasing in mountains around the world (Cuestas-Cavas et al., 2024; Sharma et al., 2025). Partners in the Mountain Futures Initiative want to stimulate support for these developments using a social-ecological systems-based lens to connect seven major, overlapping strands of a more inclusive BE: biodiversity protection; biocultural conservation; circular economy principles; biotechnology innovation; digital integration; sustainable fair trade; and social equity and justice (Xu and Grumbine, 2026).

There exist several challenges to employing such an inclusive BE as a framework to guide actions for sustainability. First, BE grew from a relatively narrow, technocratic foundation, has only recently become more inclusive as described above, and it is still evolving. Second, most decision making around BE continues to be made by governments and businesses with little input from local people and communities; this is a consequence of the history of BE evolving within top-down, mainstream structures of technocratic power and authority (Linner and Wibeck, 2025; Santos, 2026). This last point is particularly concerning: for most IPLC at all scales from global to local and lowlands to highlands, colonization issues remain unresolved including all-important rights to territorial land tenure and natural resources based on self-determination, self-government, and political participation (Dominguez and Luoma, 2020; Reyes-Garcia et al., 2026). Third, since employment of a more inclusive BE is just beginning and is nowhere operating at scale, it is too soon to tell if using such a framework will contribute toward ongoing resolution of indigenous rights and greater support for mountain IPLC. It is too early to tell if broad transformative change will move mainstream environmental and development actions away from policies that continue to prioritize economic market values, while discounting alternative ways that IPLC relate to nature (Pascual et al., 2023). Finally, every research project and action plan at this early stage of development cannot be expected to engage with all seven sectors of an inclusive BE to advance support for IPLC. However, if interdisciplinary, cross-sector teamwork is essential to begin to address multi-sector problems in the Anthropocene, then such work now and into the future will likely be based on inclusive, co-productive partnerships with IPLC (and others) with conservation and socially just development treated as equal goals (Carino and Ferrari, 2023; Chibwe et al., 2024).

For each of the seven inclusive BE sectors identified above, we spotlight key issues for IPLC living in mountains that are identified by scholars and practitioners in the published literature. For each sector, we offer representative examples of recent and current work addressing these challenges with a focus on mountain IPLC. We then address overall lessons learned from reviewing the literature and future trends in the discussion section followed by policy implications in the conclusion.

3 Inclusive bioeconomy: key issues and current work supporting IPLC living in mountains

3.1 Biodiversity protection

3.1.1 Key issues

Mountains contain many biodiversity hotspots and conservation of species and habitats is essential for maintaining the ecological functions and services that undergird mountain peoples’ lifeways (Zhang et al., 2026). Yet, montane lands currently dedicated to conservation (especially in the Global South) are not well-protected, show little connectivity across regional landscapes, and lack linkages with IPLC-managed territories, agricultural production areas, and other lands (Elsen et al., 2020; Theobald et al., 2024; Pepin et al., 2025). In addition, many countries are experiencing challenges in meeting the new KMGBF Targets 2 and 3 for protecting and restoring additional lands by 2030. This is indicated by the fact that by early 2026, almost 2 years after blueprints were due, only 40% of Parties to the COP biodiversity agreement had submitted action plans (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-half-of-nations-meet-un-deadline-for-nature-loss-reporting/). There is an ongoing lack of funding and limited coordination within and between countries around accomplishing biodiversity conservation in most places around the planet, and this is especially so in mountain regions where the majority of IPLC live (Klein et al., 2019; Payne et al., 2020).

3.1.2 Current work supporting IPLC

Projects that partner mainstream biodiversity researchers, managers, and IPLC to better incorporate traditional indigenous knowledge into biodiversity protection are key for 21st century conservation (Byakagaba et al., 2021; Dawson et al., 2021; da Silva et al., 2025). To illustrate, we use examples from three issue areas: landscape connectivity, ecological restoration, and data gaps. Connectivity researchers have now begun to plan for landscapes not just to provide for species movement between protected areas, but also to incorporate biodiversity into agricultural lands, support more efficient water management, enhance carbon sequestration, and conserve cultural areas important to IPLC (Ran et al., 2022). In some countries, scientists and IPLC are working together to identify lands (labeled Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OCEMs) where biodiversity is conserved but may not be the primary management focus (Cook et al., 2026). The IPLC-led International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity is helping to define and identify OECMs and also provide input on how to monitor conservation progress in such areas (https://iifb-indigenous.org/about-us/). IPLC are also contributing indigenous knowledge to help identify priority areas for restoration in mountains in line with KMGBF Target 2 for restoring degraded lands (Fischer et al., 2020; Christmann and Menor, 2021). With healthy soil fundamental for montane smallholder food-growing practices and general provision of ecosystem and cultural services, there are multiple projects seeking to discover how fungi and microbes may help to build soils more rapidly on degraded sites (Wang et al., 2022; Shokri et al., 2025). Agroforestry is also being experimented with as a tool for ecological restoration (Sharma P. S. et al., 2026). In general, tree crops conserve biodiversity while increasing carbon sequestration on croplands (Zomer et al., 2022), and mountain IPLC may gain multiple ecosystem service benefits from its use (Hagazi et al., 2020). Many of these efforts go beyond a science-technological, project-focused way of working with nature by supporting a deeper indigenous, ecological sense of resilience that (re)defines sustainability based on place-based interconnections and alliances (Roysen et al., 2026).

Regional projects seeking to strengthen links between IPLC concerns and biodiversity conservation are found in many places in global mountains. For a global, community-based conservation perspective, one can explore the Indigenous Community Conserved Areas/Territories of Life registry (https://www.iccaconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ICCA-Briefing-Note-7-Final-for-websites.pdf). In the South American Andes, the work of CONDESAN (Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion) has resulted in a research framework that captures interactions between ecological and IPLC social values (Mathez-Stiefel et al., 2017). Other notable regional mountain-focused projects include the Andes Amazon Conservancy (https://aaconserve.org/), Asociacion ANDES https://andes.org.pe/, and the IPLC-led life plans (buen vivir) movement (Ravikumar and del Arco, 2025; Jiménez-Aceituno et al., 2025). Representative projects in Africa include the Alliance for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities for Conservation in Africa (https://aica-africa.org/), along with other biodiversity/IPLC work (Bezeng et al., 2025). In Asia, the Hindu Kush Himalaya is a hotbed of integrative IPLC/biodiversity conservation with local projects focused on climate resilience and adaptation (Kapruvan et al., 2025; Negi et al., 2022) and wildlife protection (Young et al., 2025). Efforts to construct indigenous international peace parks are ongoing in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (Gao et al., 2022) and Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (Paul et al., 2023).

Slowing down this project work are the many biological and cultural data gaps in mountain social-ecological systems (Ly et al., 2023). Lack of data, however, creates numerous opportunities to work with IPLC partners to identify knowledge gaps using biocultural metrics to map culturally significant species and lands (Reyes-García et al., 2023). And IPLC are increasingly proactive in offering indigenous knowledge solutions to reduce data gaps as they seek to link biodiversity and cultural conservation (Ban et al., 2018; Carroll et al., 2020).

3.2 Biocultural conservation

3.2.1 Key issues

Mountain communities possess cultural traditions tied to knowledge of local and regional ecosystems. IPLC, in general, consider people to be connected to life within a web of reciprocal relations. Such knowledge is gained through experience across generations, guiding people and societies in their interactions with the world (Brondizio et al., 2021). IPLC have been instrumental in shaping international advocacy through several UN processes: the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A key biocultural issue is how to build more partnerships between IPLC and experts to co-produce specific IPLC/Western science hybrid knowledge, plans, and actions that can be implemented with, and not just for, local peoples at local and regional levels (Fernández-Llamazares et al., 2021; Ibarra et al., 2023a). Many efforts to do this work are in motion in mountains around the world despite the challenges of bringing together different realms of knowledge after legacies of conquest and marginalization of IPLC (Lam et al., 2020; McElwee et al., 2025; Sherpa et al., 2026).

3.2.2 Current work supporting IPLC

From the many projects seeking to link indigenous knowledge with science, we focus here on non-traditional forest products (NTFP) including wild foods, medicines, fibers, and animal products (Boyapati and Muthukumarappan, 2025). These products have cumulative global value in the hundreds of billions of dollars as well as significant local economic and cultural value for montane IPLC households (Singh et al., 2024; Zamani et al., 2025). In the Hindu Kush Himalaya and Mountains of Southwest China, the most economically valuable NTFP is caterpillar fungus (Othiocordyceps sinensis), though high value does not guarantee sustainable management (Hopping et al., 2018). Informal caterpillar fungus economies (and other NTFPs) are often subject to increased incentives to harvest, fewer regulations, and little or no monitoring of levels of use. There are also hidden economic inequalities for many NTFP which are often based on local peoples’ weak market position, and these can lead to increased workloads and reduced income (Wang and He, 2026). In Nepal, recent work that maps NTFP market chains offers solutions: strengthen IPLC access rights to lands where NTFPs are gathered; replace top-down government control (harvest bans) with incentives that support cultivation of select species; and build secondary processing facilities that create value-added jobs with monetary benefits for local communities (Smith-Hall et al., 2025). Similar recommendations come from other highlands projects in the mountains of Southwest China (Fan and He, 2024) and mountains in East Africa (Cuni-Sanchez et al., 2025). NTFPs are mostly missing from the inclusive BE literature, but today’s researchers are becoming more savvy about the need to integrate socio-economic perspectives into projects (Larson et al., 2022; Peerzada et al., 2022). For example, using inclusive BE, researchers (with IPLC co-partners) can study entire value chains from highlands production through lowlands end use to create NTFP management that benefits people and nature (Fold et al., 2023; Chamberlain and Smith-Hall, 2024; Boyapati and Muthukumarappan, 2025). Mountain people are also using their traditional knowledge to link sustainable use of NTFP with protected areas management; in the Peruvian Andes, the IPLC-led Potato Park integrates biodiversity conservation with a thriving NTFP-based economy (Jimenez et al., 2022). The social-ecological attributes of this particular project connect with research results from other mountain regions showing that communities often place a premium on sustainability practices that redefine how conservation and local use of nature are interconnected (Wyss et al., 2022; Yang H. et al., 2025).

3.3 Circular economy practices

3.3.1 Key issues

This single sector is almost as all-encompassing as inclusive BE itself. Circular economy practices seek to construct a more sustainable economic system by reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering materials throughout life cycles of production, distribution, and consumption, while also attending to environmental quality and social equity. (the first paper to prioritize the social-ecological aspects of BE was Murray et al., 2017; much work has followed including Kirchherr et al., 2023; Formenti et al., 2025; Peng et al., 2025). Some 75 countries have circular economy roadmaps, though global production of new materials continues to far outpace circular usage (Circle Economy, 2025). Similar to national BE plans, we find no evidence that any circular economy plan directly addresses the more transformative aspects of circularity that go beyond incremental socio-technical change to include novel ideas of the pluriverse where IPLC are at the center of transformative change (Roysen et al., 2026). And none of these national plans address circular economy issues specific to IPLC living in mountains. Using one example of circular economy work that is critically important to livelihoods of IPLC, we focus here on montane circular agriculture/food systems.

Many mountain dwellers are engaged in and often dependent on agriculture; as a group, smallholders produce 35% of all global food (Lowder et al., 2025). Yet montane IPLC, already disproportionately disadvantaged due to their history of being colonized, socially undervalued, and politically underrepresented, face increasing food and health insecurity due to: loss of agricultural lands in highlands; fewer working farmers given population shifts and aging; and increasing impacts of climate change (Romeo et al., 2020; Davis et al., 2025; Kandel et al., 2025). As social-ecological problems in food systems grow, a great amount of research is exploring circular, regenerative, agroecological, precision, and climate-smart agriculture methods adapted for use in mountains (Grumbine et al., 2021). Global (and regional) montane areas differ dramatically due to their wide diversity of social-ecological conditions, yet results from these studies offer remarkably similar recommendations in support of IPLC from global (Ibarra et al., 2023b; Lidder and Cataneo, 2025; Touch et al., 2025), to regional scales (Ayala -Orosco et al., 2018; Sidle et al., 2023). Consensus recommendations include: securing land tenure; engaging in collaborative and equitable decision making with IPLC partners; setting targets for social-ecological benefits beyond those that focus only on economic efficiencies and production; increasing government support for agricultural extension services, water management infrastructure, and weather information; and establishing green product/market supply chains.

3.3.2 Current work supporting IPLC

Specific, local actions that are recommended to encourage sustainability in montane circular food systems show much commonality and illustrate the need for a multi-sector approach. Mountain farmers are already switching cultivars as they seek drought-resistant and/or higher-value crops to adapt to climate change (Subedi et al., 2023). Neglected and underutilized plants are being assessed for nutritional value, adaptability to climate change, and use as Future Smart Crops (Saiyasombat et al., 2025). There is increasing attention to the health impacts of crop choices since some IPLC are experiencing food transitions with accompanying loss of nutritive value in common foods (Ambipathki et al., 2022). Cross-sector methods to improve soil management for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and carbon storage are being experimented with (Smith et al., 2015; Dissanayaka et al., 2025; Shokri et al., 2025). Use of affordable, biomass-based substitutes to chemical fertilizers is becoming more common along with use of new bioactive compounds to produce animal feed and reduce food waste (Shaaban et al., 2025). Given that 80% of smallholder farmers depend on rain-fed agriculture, improved water storage and management is critical as climate change continues (Kummu et al., 2021). However, infrastructure improvements do not just depend on government investment; some projections show that technical and financial solutions to water issues will likely be insufficient without greater attention to equity and justice for IPLC (Sheng et al., 2026).

A circular economy approach to smallholder agriculture embeds farms in multifunctional landscapes and farmers are experimenting with planting non-crop vegetation in and around fields, managing for pollinators, and incorporating agroforestry to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services while harvests are produced (Grumbine et al., 2021; Yang Y. et al. 2025). Across landscapes, innovative work is being done to connect farms into wildlife movement corridors, watersheds (Kremen and Merenlender, 2018), and areas where wild foods are gathered by IPLC (Sunderland, 2023). In mountain regions around the world, there are numerous UN-designated Globally Important Agricultural/Natural Heritage Sites that provide landscape-level laboratories where partnerships with IPLC can yield lessons learned about how to integrate agriculture with biodiversity protection (Santoro et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2025). In highlands in Zimbabwe, the Masaaii Conservancy and Central Highlands Ecoregion Foodscape are engaged in similar work (Muzata and Mutimba, 2025). Work to tie many of these efforts together using digital integration tools is also progressing (MacPherson et al., 2022).

As these various projects develop, outside supporters are learning that most mountain farmers depend less on scientific data and more on place-based perceptions of change, and they tend to value social-ecological stewardship as much as production results (Balsiger et al., 2025; Raffeld et al., 2025). IPLC are also adept at blending diverse local and outside scientific knowledges into hybrid forms that result in context-specific strategies to support local communities (Xu and Grumbine, 2014; Prakofyewa et al., 2026).

Overall, though mountain farmers have a history of resilient adaptation to environmental and social change, the deeper interconnections that guide IPLC relationships with nature are finally beginning to be acknowledged by mainstream conservation scientists and practitioners (Wyss et al., 2022; Grafton et al., 2025). There is also debate over whether circular economy/agriculture innovations can provide enough benefits at scale to make a difference given the many millions of montane IPLC farmers in need of jobs and income for food security amidst ongoing rapid change (Davis et al., 2025; Pierri et al., 2025). But fast-paced change in the biotechnology and digital integration sectors of inclusive BE offer the possibility of providing new benefits to montane IPLC.

3.4 Biotechnology

3.4.1 Key issues

Biotechnology for sustainable materials production was an original focus of BE decades ago and today, some 50 countries are developing national plans while private, start-up funding for biotech projects is expanding rapidly. Multiple biotechnology practices are speeding the pace of change including gene sequencing/editing/CRISPR applications; anaerobic digestion to produce biogas; creation of bio-based cellular foods; and use of microbes and fungi to break down food wastes, degrade plastics, and create innovative medicines and wound management applications (Meta et al., 2026). In our review of the literature, we found relatively few descriptions of biotech projects with IPLC partners, indicating that this inclusive BE sector likely remains dominated by engineering and technical actors who, in general, may have less experience and/or concern for the values and social issues that are meaningful to mountain people (Gottinger et al., 2020; Dace et al., 2024). There appear to be three main barriers that limit indigenous engagement with biotechnology: values-based, practical, and regulatory. IPLC generally value rights and responsibilities to nature with less emphasis on ownership that leads to monetizing products for profit, which often is the primary goal for biotech business partners. These differences have led to ongoing debates about “ownership” of intellectual property rights, genetic material, and more, that are still unresolved (Lai et al., 2025). In practice, IPLC have little contemporary biotech experience: they have been historically underserved in education, virtually all modern biotech has been imported into IPLC communities from the outside without local consultation, and few (if any) of these products have been constructed based on specific IPLC needs. Attempts are being made to address these issues through international agreements and national laws/regulations governing biotechnology, but current access and benefit sharing rules still disadvantage IPLC (Lai, 2025).

3.4.2 Current work supporting IPLC

With few field projects mentioned in the literature and regulations still evolving, how may biotech researchers wishing to collaborate with IPLC proceed? For answers, we focus here on the fast-growing field of biotech fungi applications since these organisms have immediate relevance to IPLC due to generations of biocultural use (Tiwari and Park, 2024). First steps include reaching out to IPLC at the product design stage to understand customary values and protocols so that a relational framework can be built upon “microbial ownership” (Handsley-Davis et al., 2023), indigenous data sovereignty, and clear, communication about benefits and costs of bio-based products (Hudson et al., 2012; Bader et al., 2023). Practical details on how to do this are found in: the UN/FAO Free Prior and Informed Consent: An Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and a Good Practice for Local Communities: Manual for Project Practitioners (FAO, 2016); the Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology (http://ethnobiology.net/code-of-ethics/); e-learning modules provided by the NGO Natural Justice (https://naturaljustice.org/e-learning-modules/); and materials from the African Microbiome Initiative (Oduaran et al., 2024). There is no one-size-fits-all approach to working with diverse IPLC living in different montane geographic regions; each fungal biotech project will proceed in unique ways.

Neither are there single approaches to collaborate with IPLC using existing access and benefit sharing laws and regulations. There are several international frameworks to guide collection/use of genetic resources, digital sequence information used in research and development, and equitable sharing of monetary and other benefits from biotechnology applications. These include the 1992 CBD Prior Informed Consent, 2010 Nagoya Protocol, the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge, the Indigenous Peoples Economic and Trade Cooperation Arrangement, and the biodiversity COP 16 Cali Agreement. Yet none of these fully serve IPLC; for example, only countries can negotiate/sign these agreements, and national laws that determine implementation have had little IPLC input (Humphries, 2025). There exist other codes of conduct covering benefit sharing include the voluntary FAIR, TRUST, and CARE protocols, yet aligning these voluntary frameworks with IPLC interests and private business concerns is challenging. Some experts suggest that inclusive BE can be employed to completely reframe access and benefit sharing by restructuring agreements to emphasize rights of IPLC for self-determination and data sovereignty (Blom et al., 2025; Lai, 2025). If these transformative changes were to occur, researchers envision a bright future for indigenous-led fungal biotech partnerships featuring ethically sourced digital sequencing information and new protocols such as a proposed Applied and Conservation Mycological Framework (Dace et al., 2024; Astolfi et al., 2025; Perez et al., 2025). Another approach uses Biocultural, Traditional Knowledge, and Cultural Institution Notices; these are highly visible, machine-readable icons that signal the indigenous provenance of genetic resources and rights of IPLC communities to define future use (https://support.datacite.org/docs/local-contexts-notices-and-labels). Yet another effort toward reform involves Basecamp Research, a consortium that is building the world’s largest ethically-sourced database of DNA sequences and is working toward multiple inclusive partnerships with IPLC (Johnson et al., 2025). Many IPLC see biotech as holding great promise, given its power to connect parts into a whole. This is also a defining feature of the next sector of inclusive BE--digital integration.

3.5 Digital integration

3.5.1 Key issues

Digital integration refers to the direct application of new interactive technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, multi-party computation, blockchain, robotics, and gene technologies among many innovations (Cord and Wätzold, 2026). These tools are being used to deliver interconnected management solutions within and across every sector of inclusive BE. Digital integration encompasses much more than applying innovative technologies; it is transformative since it involves moving to digital structures that will produce new values, products, and ways of conducting business that will have ancillary biophysical, economic, and social impacts (Creutzig et al., 2022). For many mountain-dwelling IPLC, inexpensive digital tools—cell phones equipped with GPS, weather advisory and field management applications, E-commerce platforms, drones—are already part of daily life.

For many IPLC, but not most. The future of digital integration is already here, but its uptake remains unevenly distributed. Globally, some 30% of people do not yet have access to 3G or 4G internet service with most of this population in lower and middle income countries in the Global South (Porciello et al., 2022). Montane IPLC, smallholder farmers, and women have even less internet access in these places. When these groups do have access, current national digital usage regulations do not often protect personal data. Some of the same barriers that limit IPLC use of biotechnologies also impede expansion of digital integration (Fan et al., 2025). With little published research on digital integration focused on the Global South and much of this output concentrated on technical applications, few papers feature the community context that is so important to IPLC (Bawack et al., 2025). In fact, many experts believe that building digital integration requires bundling these applications with infrastructure development, improved government support and regulations, and diverse cultural collaborations (Davis et al., 2025; Lidder and Cataneo, 2025). But digital integration is not value-free and its ultimate goals remain contested (Klerkx et al., 2020; Salas-Pilco, 2025). If these issues can be successfully navigated, digital integration holds tremendous promise for mountain-dwelling IPLC.

3.5.2 Current work supporting IPLC

Numerous examples of digital integration projects involving IPLC are described in the literature across most inclusive BE sectors. As work to digitize biodiversity data advances, there are few issues with the technologies themselves and more concerns around equitable implementation and regulation (Linner and Wibeck, 2025). Researchers and IPLC partners are using satellite imaging, mobile apps, and drones to find ways to reduce costs and increase production on smallholder farms (Guebsi et al., 2024). Another partnership is bringing local weather observations into modelling of climate change impacts (Reyes-García et al., 2019). In Peru, satellite-based alerts and drones are being used in community deforestation monitoring (Slough et al., 2021). These projects provide evidence that IPLC involvement with digital integration is growing, though these projects are not yet common enough to effect large-scale change.

IPLC involvement with disaster risk management (DRM) in mountains using digital integration is more widespread and, given the importance of managing extreme events to highlands people, we spotlight examples of this work. Since the 1990s in mountains worldwide, there have been increases in flooding and landslides with more expected to occur into the future due to climate change (Bang, 2024). Current DRM international standards accent actions to prevent, prepare, reduce, and recover from disasters, and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction highlights the need for multi-hazard assessment, increased government and institutional support, and engagement with IPLC (Tupper and Fearnley, 2023; UNDDR, 2024). However, as of 2023, only 46% of lower income countries had constructed such plans (UNDDR, 2024). There is a general lack of satellite-based weather monitoring infrastructure in the Global South, and most DRM decisions continue to be made in a top-down manner by governments with little input from IPLC (Budimir et al., 2025). Even when montane countries (Peru, Ecuador) do have strong DRM regulations on paper, political and institutional challenges reduce implementation (Salgado et al., 2025). Despite these issues, in the Andes, IPLC and researchers are constructing a landslide hazard map using geospatial technologies (Klimeš et al., 2019), while another Andean project monitors flood risk with low-cost digital sensors and mobile apps (Salgado et al., 2025). In the Hindu Kush Himalaya, IPLC and research partners are monitoring landslide zones in real time using IoT, and machine learning (Rawat and Barthwal, 2024). Another project uses IPLC traditional place-based maps as baselines for building digitized geohazard maps (Ahmed et al., 2019). There are several other IPLC/digital integration efforts reported from mountains around the world (see Hadlos et al., 2022).

Several lesson learned have emerged from this work. First, IPLC have always engaged in DRM using traditional practices and, for some time now, mountain people have been combining traditional insights with useful outside information yielding hybrid knowledge to address community problems (Agrawal, 1995). There is no simple “victim-rescuer” dichotomy at play in montane DRM (Ingham and Redshaw, 2017). Second, there is agreement that DRM hybrid knowledge applications yield more success than either traditional or scientific pathways alone (Hadlos et al., 2022; Tupper and Fearnley, 2023). Third, while international agreements portray IPLC as critical actors in DRM, national government institutions, laws, and policies do not yet offer enough on-the- ground support for IPLC. Local people are generally ready to work with digital integration tools after some training, but governments are slow to provide adequate digital infrastructure, data protection, and decision making opportunities for local communities (Hadlos et al., 2022; Venegas et al., 2026). Last, when IPLC self-determination is acknowledged and time is spent developing clear communications and trust between local people, researchers, and governments, successful outcomes are often obtained (Paudel et al., 2024; Mulungu et al., 2025; Pawar and Sharma, 2025).

3.6 Sustainable fair trade

3.6.1 Key issues

Extreme events often destabilize local trade and lifeways for IPLC living in mountains. The same could be said about aspects of the global economy; despite generating many economic benefits, mainstream trade has to a great degree been based on ecologically unequal and socially inequitable exchange (Cumming and von Cramon-Taubadel, 2018; Dorninger et al., 2021). For governments and institutions that set economic rules, sustainable fair trade offers profound challenges and also opportunities for restructuring relations with IPLC. Research shows overlaps between sustainable fair trade and other inclusive BE sectors; for example, much biodiversity loss is driven by export of agricultural commodity crops from the Global South to the Global North (Green et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2025). Meta-coupling research has been influential in understanding how mountain people fit into trade patterns; there is evidence that montane IPLC are often disadvantaged due to business decision-making power being concentrated at midstream and downstream levels away from highlands local communities (Wei et al., 2024). Digital integration tools can be used to spotlight social-ecological inequalities and offer steps to increase supply chain transparency (Negi et al., 2022; Sharma R. S. et al., 2026). Overall, integrating social equity and inclusion into international and national trade policies is a prerequisite to creating green supply chains, but this will take considerable, sustained cooperation between local, regional, and international actors (Liverpool-Tassie et al., 2020; Astolfi et al., 2025). Here, we focus on what IPLC and supporters are doing to construct supply chains that better serve mountain people.

3.6.2 Current work supporting IPLC

Mountain IPLC are not waiting for governments and businesses to make social change around fair trade. Local people are increasingly using eco-certifications, farmer cooperatives, product life cycle analysis, and digital integration to construct sustainable supply chains that uphold their values. Montane IPLC have created Biocultural Heritage Territories/Territories of Life in the Andes (Zanjani et al., 2023), and mountains in China (Song et al., 2021) from which they can send local products to market while garnering community, biodiversity conservation, and biocultural benefits. Cooperatives are being used by IPLC in many montane locations to build community-based supply chains (Bizikova et al., 2020): Kichwa people in Ecuador are using a forestry cooperative to manage sustainable export of holly guayusa (Ilex guayusa) (Krause and Ness, 2017); in Africa, village collectives are managing supply chains for rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) (Meyer and Naicker, 2023). Farmer cooperatives are vital to smallholders engaged in coffee (Coffea spp.) and tea (Camellia sinensis) supply chains. Coffee is the most valuable global product produced in mountains; it is grown on over 10 million hectares of highlands by 12.5 million smallholder farmers, many of whom are IPLC (Wright et al., 2024; Kishaija et al., 2025). Coffee that is fair trade-certified only represents about 5% of all coffee sold, so there is much room for certificate expansion. However, eco-labelling does not solve every problem. In highlands in Central and South America, certification may result in lower yields and higher labor costs for IPLC (Jena and Grote, 2022). For both coffee and tea, women do 60%–70% of the work without gaining equal benefits, yet certification does not address this dynamic. Fair trade certification depends on several factors that farmers have little control over. In Nepal, certified coffee farmers have gained increased incomes but also have struggled with irregular government policies and lack of access to credit (Poudel et al., 2019). Use of third party certification is common, yet is dependent upon monitoring and verification that are sometimes too expensive for montane IPLC to implement (Makita and Tsuruta, 2025; Zhang et al., 2026), and in the highlands of Ethiopia, loopholes exist in the coffee certification process (Arai et al., 2023). Life cycle analysis can also bolster green supply chains and certification, and mountain IPLC and research partners are using this for medicinal maca (Lepidium meyenii) (Solórzano-Acosta et al., 2025), quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) in the Andes (Alandia et al., 2020), and coffee and tea in multiple mountain countries (Calvillo-Arriola and Sotelo-Navarro, 2024; Sun et al., 2024).

Digital integration (including blockchain, IoT, and big data analytics) is being employed to enhance supply chain integration, adaptability and resilience for IPLC (Lidder and Cataneo, 2025). Blockchain analytics can track and trace products while providing digital identities for rural communities (Meemken et al., 2024), thereby reducing some of the social-ecological concerns held by IPLC (Powell et al., 2024). Digital e-commerce platforms allow upland and lowland smallholders to sell directly to consumers helping to boost profit margins (UNGA, 2023); MyAgro, a collaborative mobile platform used by 115,000 farmers in three African countries, offers supply chain savings to small-scale producers (Benne, 2023).

There are still relatively few published examples of montane IPLC using digital integration tools. But there is broad agreement that businesses and governments are the two biggest barriers to sustainable fair trade for mountain people (Rosegrant et al., 2022). IPLC do not have the economic capital or political heft to rearrange major supply chains for mountain products; private companies must offer more funding and leadership to develop fair trade partnerships with IPLC if sustainability is a 21st century business goal. Neither can IPLC coordinate international trade agreements, unify national regulations, or provide digital infrastructure in highlands. Governments must work more closely with IPLC if building economically resilient mountain communities is a sustainability target (Gharakhani Dehsorkhi et al., 2026). The various forms of the buen vivir movement practiced by many IPLC in South America provide models for deeper integration of indigenous values that, in time, may alter current dominant economic ways of relating with nature. Despite the immense wealth and power generated by mainstream market economies, when it comes to long-term, sustainable fair trade, IPLC values of reciprocity and multi-sector cooperation embedded in the African word “ubuntu”-- “I am because we are”-- may offer the best business model for fair trade with IPLC into the future (Razak et al., 2024).

3.7 Social equity and justice

3.7.1 Key issues

There is broad consensus in the literature that equitable and just social values need to be better incorporated into every sector of an inclusive BE. Yet, in addition to “ownership”, there is ongoing debate about who defines “equitable”, “inclusive”, and “just”, given the history of IPLC communities being colonized, undervalued and underrepresented (Domínguez and Luoma, 2020; Lima, 2022). The non-inclusive, technology-driven origin and evolution of BE is still questioned by many IPLC, scholars, and activists who ask: does inclusive BE merely represent a more refined version of the ‘development first, sustainability second’ status quo with IPLC finally allowed a seat at the table today but still not permitted to vote (Backhouse et al., 2021; Ruml et al., 2025)? We spotlight four social equity gaps that IPLC face to provide perspective.

3.7.1.1 Social health

IPLC comprise about 6% of Earth’s human population, yet some 19% live in extreme poverty (ILO, 2019). IPLC have disproportionately lower levels of access to piped water, electricity, and internet services and higher levels of infant mortality, malnutrition, and infectious diseases (Redvers et al., 2022). IPLC have more exposure to environmental degradation from mining, forestry, and dams than other groups (Scheidel et al., 2023), even as they participate less in decision making around these resource uses (Backhouse et al., 2021). Yet relatively little site-specific research has addressed these issues. Quantitatively, there are fewer research publications on IPLC in the Global South where most indigenous people live, and far less research focused on mountain-dwelling IPLC (FAO, 2024; Reyes -Garcia et al., 2026). Qualitatively, many papers portray some unspecified, non-political sense of “inclusion” as the primary IPLC concern instead of the political recognition and self-determination that are most important to local people (Ayala -Orozco et al., 2018; Lam et al., 2020).

3.7.1.2 Land tenure

Today, IPLC legally control only 11% of territories they inhabit with recognized authority (conferred by states) over an additional 7% (RRI, 2023). Global systems of people relating to lands for access and control range from collective, customary relations to rule of law-based private ownership, but land tenure remains primarily controlled by countries (Pierri et al., 2025). This results in great heterogeneity in land tenure recognition for IPLC; for example, China recognizes around 50%, Ecuador 25%, and Kenya 67%, while none of 12 countries in the Middle East acknowledge any form of legal IPLC ownership (RRI, 2023). Despite these differences, securing land tenure is widely considered fundamental to increasing self-determination, food security, and environmental conservation for IPLC. (Wily, 2018; Dhir et al., 2020). Securing stronger land tenure for IPLC is also seen as necessary to achieve targets for the SDGs (Zheng et al., 2021), KMGBF (Cariño and Farhan Ferrari, 2021), and Paris climate targets (Iocca et al., 2023).

3.7.1.3 Status of women

Women in general and mountain dwelling IPLC women in particular face many customary, social, and economic barriers compared to men, and this also remains true for mainstream, non-inclusive BE (Hackford et al., 2025). Multi-country reviews show that montane women often fulfill roles as primary household and agricultural workers, resource managers, and knowledge keepers, but have less access to education, mobility, and decision making (FAO, 2022). Specific studies from the Hindu Kush Himalaya (Ullah et al., 2026), African Highlands (Abebe and Jones, 2025), and South American mountains (Lalander et al., 2023) confirm these results. About half of all countries continue to limit land tenure and property ownership for women (UN Women, 2020). These discriminatory norms also reduce womens’ problem-solving contributions to biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation.

3.7.1.4 Government support

Historically, state and local political powers have not often provided mountain people with adequate resources. Despite signing onto international agreements that support IPLC rights including the (legally binding) 1989 ILO Indigenous and Tribal People Convention (No.169), and (voluntary) 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, many countries have been slow to follow through on these commitments in national laws (Kennedy et al., 2023). The position of IPLC in the UN biodiversity COP process was debated for 24 years with no resolution until recently, and there is little mention of highlands (or lowlands) IPLC in most Parties’ National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (Reed et al., 2025). The same holds true for UN climate convention National Action Plans where only a handful of countries detail any actions involving IPLC (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-half-of-nations-meet-un-deadline-for-nature-loss-reporting/). And the equity and justice concerns of IPLC continue to be underrepresented in the Integrated Assessment Models (Krawczyk and Braun, 2025), and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios that climate change modelling projections are based on (Xexakis et al., 2026).

3.7.2 Current work supporting IPLC

Going forward, there exist a wealth of opportunities to use an inclusive BE in service of more equitable sustainability for montane IPLC. Spotlighting the four equity gaps above, we provide representative examples from the literature that describe slowly expanding progress.

3.7.2.1 Social health

There are a host of initiatives across the Global South that are advancing general IPLC input into equity for social health (Jimenez-Aceitano et al., 2025). Targeting the persistent lack of IPLC-specific social health screening tools, a new rights-based framework to support an Indigenous Women’s Mental Health Strategy is being tested (Field, 2026), and a first-ever assessment on how to bring IPLC womens’ knowledge into education practices in the Global South is now available (Sekele and Teis, 2025). In mountainous Nepal, women have inserted themselves into public debate around how to improve disaster risk management to better support IPLC households (Bajrachara et al., 2022). These initiatives are building support for IPLC, though much work remains to be done.

3.7.2.2 Land tenure

Resolving land tenure issues for IPLC around the world remains an ongoing challenge. Progress must come from country-by-country willingness to enact more equitable national regulations. So far, however, international efforts have been driving reforms. Through the Inclusive Conservation Initiative, the Global Environmental Facility Trust Fund 8 and partners have allocated USD ten million for tenure reform in nine regions, five of which are mountainous (https://iifb-indigenous.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/02tania-eulalia-gef-iplcs-iifb-090425.pdf). The Forest and Climate Leader’s Partnership and the COP climate Secretariat are overseeing USD 1.7 billion given by many countries and private donors with the goal of gaining additional tenure security for IPLC across 160 million hectares by 2030 https://forestclimateleaders.org/news-and-resources/landmark-global-commitment-on-land-tenure-backed-by-15-governments-spanning-latin-america-africa-asia-and-the-pacific/. Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Indonesia are leaders in the movement for more national land tenure security. However, securing national land tenure rights for IPLC does not automatically resolve management issues, and local implementation barriers still exist to impede IPLC rights and recognition (Malisa and Mahonge, 2023).

3.7.2.3 Status of women

Led by the UN, The Mountain Partnership, and various international organizations, many efforts are underway to empower women in mountain communities. IPLC women are subject to complex relationships between gender and political participation even as they remain key activists in rights and land tenure (Santamaría et al., 2020). Interviews with hundreds of IPLC women in eight mountain areas show that women have little interest in generic “inclusion”; they want specific support to improve the social health issues mentioned above along with assistance building social networks to manage community natural resources and increase participatory rights for younger women (FAO, 22). A document outlining best practices for integrating contributions from IPLC women into the KMGBF using case studies from mountains around the world is now available for use by signatory Parties (Secretariat CBD, 2022). Across the Andes, many IPLC women-led initiatives are providing leadership for gender-equal status (Sieder and Barrera, 2017; Jimenez-Aceituno et al., 2025), and recent constitutional changes in Bolivia and Ecuador have opened up more decision making for IPLC women (Rousseau, 2011). Since 2021, when Peru became the first state in South America to explicitly include IPLC and gender issues in the national Climate Adaptation Plan, indigenous women have been contributing to gender-equal implementation (Moulton et al., 2024).

3.7.2.4 Government support

Today, efforts by indigenous activists to gain increased recognition and decision making are resulting in unprecedented progress in IPLC-government relationships. The formal position for IPLC in the UN biodiversity COP was finally settled in 2024 with the establishment of the Subsidiary Body on Article 8(j) and Other Provisions of the CBD Related to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, and this body is now providing input into implementation of the KMGBF (CBD/COP/DEC/16/5). Since 2025, the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility has engaged 20 countries in funding tenure reform on IPLC territories (https://www.greenclimate.fund/ae/tenure-facility#documents). The recent Brazil-led Tropical Forests Forever Facility has secured about USD 7 billion for forest conservation in the tropics (including tenure reform), with 20% of funds to be sent directly to IPLC (https://tfff.earth/cop30-ends-with-over-us-6-7-billion-for-the-tfff/). In parallel, the UN Global Framework for Five Years of Action for the Development of Mountain Regions 2023–2027 is providing USD millions in increased funding for multiple IPLC projects (FAO, 24). On the other hand, policy and financial support for smallholder farmers (many of whom are IPLC) remains limited (Ricciardi et al., 2020). And the mining of minerals to support the global energy transition shows that montane IPLC (and others) still struggle to have their basic human rights with free, prior, and informed consent acknowledged on traditional homelands (Riggs et al., 2026).

Governments and private businesses often continue to view IPLC-led movements for social-ecological justice as less than legitimate (Urzedo and Robinson, 2023). Yet progress may be building slowly toward more social equity and justice for IPLC. But, given the great ambition of weaving this work into all sectors of inclusive BE to create a more sustainable whole, one must ask, what does the future hold?

4 Discussion: the future montane bioeconomy begins now

This literature review reveals broad trends that shed light on using a more inclusive BE in support of IPLC living in mountains. We spotlight five trends: lessons learned from the literature; using inclusive BE; shifts in nature and people; actions of governments and institutions; and ongoing support for IPLC living in mountains.

4.1 Future trends: lessons from the literature review

There are six lessons that are documented across every sector of inclusive BE about how to increase support for montane IPLC. These are: recognize, respect and foreground IPLC rights to self-determination; work to establish partnerships with IPLC, researchers, governments, and other actors; integrate projects across multiple sectors and scales; build knowledge through better data; increase institutional and financial support from governments and the private sector; and substantially scale up all these efforts for every sector of inclusive BE. The expert consensus is that every one of these steps is necessary and none alone are sufficient for progress to be made. Our subjective sense of these lessons is straightforward: the more the majority of recommended actions are implemented, the more rapidly support can be scaled up for IPLC. For the hundreds of studies that we reviewed, we see no need to recapitulate the many specific actions that can be taken to advance support for montane IPLC using an inclusive BE. But this literature review has made us aware that specific coverage of IPLC living in mountains is quite scant; most publications aggregate diverse IPLC into a general, composite category for global-scale analyses. However, given the great geographic spread and cultural diversity of IPLC, we are aware from our own field work that much sustainability work remains place-based and often less subject to publication. Any academic literature portrayal at the global scale is therefore unlikely to capture a full measure of positive progress and negative barriers that impact upon IPLC living in mountains. We also want to emphasize that the last lesson from this literature review---the need to substantially increase support for montane IPLC in all sectors of inclusive BE---shows that 20 years and more of calls for change from international experts and researchers have yet to exert enough influence for countries to rachet up to scale actions that can make a difference.

4.2 Future trends: using an inclusive BE

Working to design and implement an inclusive BE that supports IPLC living in mountains (or any people living anywhere) is deeply aspirational. Inclusive BE shares this trait with the SDGs, the UN climate and biodiversity COP conventions, and work to build “ecological civilization”. All these efforts are meant to be guiding stars toward a sustainable future resulting in better policies and more successful implementation; no one expects aspirational goals to be completely fulfilled. Nor does anyone expect researchers who have been socialized to split knowledge into silos or workers trained to narrowly focus on one sector of governance or business to immediately evolve into interdisciplinary actors. Transformations take time. The question becomes: is the social-ecological, multi-sectoral nature of inclusive BE an improved model that can stimulate more people to engage in more actions for long-term sustainability? We think that this can happen, but it has not happened yet (Santos, 2026). In fact, we believe that not making the attempt to use an inclusive BE (or some other transformative framework) will likely result in increased suffering for more people along with more degraded ecosystems less supportive of human endeavors, given the profound inadequacy of current mainstream efforts as detailed in this review. Of course, tensions and tradeoffs between different actors (including IPLC) will not disappear just because partners work within a more inclusive BE. While actions to increase social equity and decolonization for IPLC will continue to be slow and hard-won, seeds of change already exist in any framework that attempts to capture diverse, social-ecological values. For example, consider fair trade: as soon as a product moves across any single border, one must work with partners to solve problems ranging from pricing and profit sharing, disaster risk management, delivery timelines, customary values, customer expectations, and more. From montane subsistence agro-pastoralists to global corporations, chances for more cooperative, equitable behavior are embedded into inclusive bioeconomic vision and practice.

4.3 Future trends: shifts in nature and people in mountains

Just because sustainability values are incorporated into an inclusive BE framework does not mean implementation will be successful. Every sector of inclusive BE is in the midst of rapid change, and the same is true for trends around nature and people in mountains and most places around the planet. Climate and land-use changes are not slowing down. In fact, global warming is accelerating (Foster and Rahmstorf, 2026), as is loss of cryosphere ice in many global mountains (Schuster et al., 2025). Low elevation montane forest loss is widespread and increasing (Chen et al., 2024). About one-third of mountain grasslands are already degraded (Na et al., 2026) and already negatively impacting lifeways of high mountain agro-pastoralists (Li C. et al., 2026). Both wildfire (Chao and Chao, 2022) and rainfall-driven (Ombadi et al., 2023) extreme events are projected to increase in highlands into the future with negative consequences for disaster risk management. These trends will continue to alter mountain ecosystem dynamics and likely undermine ecosystem functions that support montane IPLC into the future.

People and their activities in mountains are continuing to shift in response to these trends. Mountain farmers are experiencing changes in wet and dry periods, making rainfed agriculture increasingly uncertain (Touch et al., 2024). Mountain residents are moving in significant numbers from rural areas to montane cities, even as urban governments are ill-equipped to support the wave of new migrants (Dragonetti et al., 2024). There are many papers on climate migration, but few publications focus on movement of mountain-dwelling IPLC. For example, for Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (one region where we work), we attempted to find country-level data on the scale of migration of mountain people and found only rough estimates; indeed, there is only a general estimate (100 million) of the total number of IPLC living in these regional highlands. Experts who study human migration in response to climate impacts recommend that governments craft multi-sectoral strategies to reduce economic and political pressures that impact mountain people, many of whom have few resources enabling them to be able to easily move (IOM and MP, 2024; Almulhim et al., 2024). So far, evidence shows that few national governments are acting on these recommendations (Hidayait et al., 2021). And human populations in mountains are growing, with projected global increases of up to 100 million people over the next several decades (Thornton et al., 2022). Current population growth and attendant, often poorly planned economic development is fueling expansion of new infrastructure into less developed mountain areas with high risk of environmental impacts (Kennedy et al., 2023; Scheidel et al., 2023). Risks around new roads in lower elevations of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, Montane Mainland Southeast Asia, Andes, and African Highlands are especially concerning (Engert et al., 2025).

4.4 Future trends: actions of governments and institutions

Given that interlinked crises demand interconnected problem-solving, it is not surprising that the majority of scholars recommend that governments and institutions build cooperative relationships with IPLC (and other partners) based on commitments to basic human rights, free, prior and informed consent, fair and transparent benefit-sharing, and greater levels of financial support that can be used to craft and implement bundles of new policies addressing multi-sectoral problems (IPBES, 24; Lidder and Cataneo, 2025; Zhang et al., 2026). This is easier said than done, however, and if states and bureaucracies are unable (due to lack of adequate financing) or unwilling (due to values and politics) to implement these approaches at scale, then problems will continue to manifest until sufficiently strong negative signals begin to influence change (Loorbach et al., 2017; Grumbine and Xu, 2021b).

Right now, political progress in mountains in the Global South is haltingly slow. At the regional level in Southeast Asia, the new 2025 Association of Southeast Asian Nations Sustainable Environment Declaration continues to refer to IPLC as “stakeholders” not “rights holders”, though this outcome was to be expected given that only two of eleven countries in this region recognize indigenous people as legally “indigenous” (Tran et al., 2025). Turkiye, the co-leader country for the 2026 climate COP meeting, with support from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran, recently narrowed or eliminated language referring to IPLC concerns in several COP documents (https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/12/09/saudi-arabia-and-cop31-host-turkiye-move-to-weaken-climate-language-at-unea/). In early 2026, the initial draft recommendations from the new Subsidiary Body that formally provides IPLC input on COP biodiversity matters, were delayed after Parties disagreed on whether and how to allow voting by non-signatory (IPLC) members. For many Parties, opening up voting to IPLC would put state-centered control of COP decision making at risk (https://enb.iisd.org/cbd-subsidiary-body-scientific-technical-technological-advice-sbstta27-sb8j1-summary#brief-analysis-meetings). And, in the first 14 months after the COP biodiversity Cali Fund was launched in 2025, only one small start-up company had donated USD 1,000 (https://www.carbonbrief.org/cali-fund-aiming-to-raise-billions-for-nature-receives-first-donation-of-just-1000/)-- this result (to date) is far removed from expectations that the fund will direct up to 50% of an expected hundreds of millions of dollars/year from large private corporations to IPLC for enhanced profit sharing from use of Digital Sequencing Information.

4.5 Future trends: IPLC living in mountains

Indigenous people recognize that political progress is slow. They are aware that only two of the above four cases collected direct input from them, showing once again that international and state decision making is still too often done for, not with, IPLC. But IPLC are not frozen in time. They continue to focus on moving away from marginalization and toward decolonization that opens up space for their rights of recognition, self-determination, and strong relations between people and nature (McGregor et al., 2020; Gram-Hanssen et al., 2022; Rathakrishnan et al., 2025). IPLC are also doing more than contesting market-driven commodification and control of their homelands. They are offering diverse alternatives that show how to restructure economic exchange away from inequitable, unjust power relations. In the Andes and elsewhere in South America, the buen vivir/Sumak Kawsag movement offers a political and practical path of life based on territorial governance, community-based economic relations, and legal rights of nature that now has a constitutional basis for the 31 million people living in Bolivia and Colombia (Ritter et al., 2025; Bermudez-Restrepo and Vaca-Lopez, 2026). In villages on the Tibetan Plateau, community IPLC decision making is slowly becoming integrated into local conservation (Zhou, 2021; Yang Y. et al. 2025; Fu et al., 2026). In western Canada, IPLC working with research partners have created novel ways to wed traditional knowledge with science in support of community values that move away from mainstream economic goals and expectations (McDowell et al., 2023). Globally, as of early 2026, some 20 countries have enshrined legal rights for nature strongly influenced by IPLC advocacy efforts (Epstein et al., 2023; Arreaga-Vicuña et al., 2026). These are examples of how IPLC embody change not just in service of their own political goals of recognition and self-determination, but through the expression of their lifeways that can broadly inspire participatory movements toward transformative change (Pereira et al., 2020; Reyes-Garcia et al., 2026). Yet, at the same time, uncertainty is evident everywhere for IPLC living in mountains, and the future is a moving target for ecosystems, territories, and cultures.

5 Conclusion: policy implications

We want to make several summary observations after reviewing these trends. The evolution away from a technology-focused bioeconomy toward the inclusive BE framework described in this paper is a positive response to growing awareness of planetary polycrises that are driving uncertainty around the world (Rakowski et al., 2025; Santos, 2026). Inclusive BE is not a panacea for any of the issues outlined here, but it does offer a more holistic approach to assist people everywhere--researchers and experts, government workers, and more—to reframe their work as they learn to fully recognize and engage with IPLC as co-partners. We have focused this paper on support for mountain-dwelling IPLC, but the recommendations herein have broad application beyond highlands and indigenous peoples.

As inclusive BE projects proceed in mountains and elsewhere and innovative learning accumulates, best practices may be debated, agreed upon, adopted, and scaled up. These processes encourage transformative change that sparks innovation and, ultimately, diffusion of new ways of thinking and acting so that long-term sustainability becomes the norm rather than the exception (Díaz et al., 2018; Scoones et al., 2020; Slameřšak et al., 2026). For montane IPLC, some of these new lessons may remain local, while others may be more widely shared. Faced with complex decisions, partners can ask: How great are the threats to biocultural traditions and biodiversity conservation here?, How much effort will it take to effect change?, How long will actions need to last?, and How best can we work together as equal partners to address social and ecological issues in design, decision making, and implementation? These practical questions can help montane IPLC and partners prioritize problems while sorting through inevitable tradeoffs.

Systemic change in values, lifeways, and institutions takes time to unfold as people everywhere from rural mountain villages to dense urban areas gain more experience with novel forms of sustainable behavior. The literature on societal change over time is limited, but existing work suggests that periods anywhere from decades to a generation or more are necessary (Otto et al., 2020; Juhola et al., 2022). Complex restructuring requires more time than incremental reform. For researchers and activists working with IPLC, this means that local and regional projects that pinpoint actions that accelerate change toward more sustainable social and ecological outcomes are likely more valuable than academic work that theorizes about transformations. In fact, prevailing academic frameworks still do not adequately deal with the social factors in social-ecological systems (Palau and Claramunt-López, 2024). Initial steps toward broader use of inclusive BE to stimulate change might include establishing partnerships with researchers, activists, and IPLC in kindred sectors such as biodiversity with biocultural conservation, circular economy principles with biotechnology innovation, and digital integration with sustainable fair trade, all the while working to better incorporate social equity and justice concerns (Garba et al., 2023; Sherpa et al., 2026). The latter are especially important; reviews of research on IPLC and climate adaptation not only show geographical gaps in knowledge but also governmental lack of engagement with capacity building and the influence of colonization on local peoples (Petzold et al., 2020). Actors in the private sector may ask: given the scale of economic and social-ecological problems we face, should we invest in mitigation that tinkers around the margins of issues, or seek more fundamental change that is necessary to move our business relations with partners forward over the next 10–20 years (Ngosso, 2026)? Governments and institutions have, so far, generally regarded IPLC advocacy for self-recognition and rights as a threat to national sovereignty rather than an opportunity to build societal resilience in an age of rapid change (Ruml et al., 2025). Along with willingness to reframe values, building such resilience requires financial resources, yet gaps are growing in delivery of government pledges from the Global North to people in middle and lower income countries, including IPLC (Dang et al., 2026; UNEP, 2026). During times of increasing geopolitical tensions, funds usually do not increasingly flow toward sustainability goals in general and montane IPLC in particular. Will governments continue to act slowly? Not if they value their ability to manage risks resulting from the increasing scale of oncoming negative ecosystem and socioeconomic shifts.

For mountain-dwelling IPLC, short-term prospects appear to be highly constrained by the pace of climatological and social-ecological changes combined with government intransigence. We believe that IPLC can be harbingers of structural change toward sustainability as they move toward working more often with co-partners aided by their reciprocal values and use of an inclusive BE and other transformative frameworks. But what happens to people with place-based identities when the mountains they call ‘home’ are undergoing dramatic social-ecological evolution? No one knows. We do know that highlands IPLC have had some success dealing with disruptive change in the past, even as projections show that the pace of ecological change (van Vuuren et al., 2025) and social pressures (Tan et al., 2026) are very likely to become more disorderly into the future. We also understand that another definition of the term uncertainty is ‘undetermined’; future change will always be subject to the less predictable human capacity to make decisions today that may scale up sustainable behaviors tomorrow. Indigenous people living in mountains have made sustainability a cornerstone of their cultures for centuries; today, and into the future, many more people now have the chance to learn from and follow their example.

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