Indigenous lands in protected areas have high forest integrity across the tropics

Intact tropical forests have a high conservation value. Although perceived as wild, they have been under long-term human influence. As global area-based conservation targets increase, the ecological contributions of Indigenous peoples through their governance institutions and practices are gaining mainstream interest. Indigenous lands—covering a quarter of Earth’s surface and overlapping with a third of intact forests—often have reduced deforestation, degradation, and carbon emissions, compared with non-protected areas and protected areas. A key question with implications for the design of more equitable and effective conservation policies is to understand the impacts of Indigenous lands on forest integrity and long-term use, as critical measures of ecosystem health included within the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Using the forest landscape integrity index and Anthromes datasets, we find that high-integrity forests tend to be located within the overlap of protected areas and Indigenous lands (protected-Indigenous areas). After accounting for location biases through statistical matching and regression, protected-Indigenous areas had the highest protective effect on forest integrity and the lowest land-use intensity relative to Indigenous lands, protected areas, and non-protected controls pan-tropically. The protective effect of Indigenous lands on forest integrity was lower in Indigenous lands than in protected areas and non-protected areas in the Americas and Asia. The combined positive effects of state legislation and Indigenous presence in protected-Indigenous areas may contribute to maintaining tropical forest integrity. Understanding management and governance in protected-Indigenous areas can help states to appropriately support community-governed lands.