World Bank profiles at UN Ocean Conference spotlight coastal indigenous invisibility and Pacific rights

Diana Pizaro, global coordinator for indigenous peoples at the World Bank, opened a panel at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice by describing new regional profiles that aim to place indigenous coastal communities "on the map" of ocean policy.

The profiles — four regional studies developed with World Bank support and PROBLUE trust funding — found stark regional differences. "The main challenge is that they are not recognized in official policies," said Johnson German, a regional indigenous researcher for Asia who identified himself as belonging to the Muka community in south India, describing how that legal invisibility leaves coastal peoples without clear land or ocean rights.

Why it matters: lack of recognition, Johnson said, means communities cannot claim customary marine areas, face industrial encroachment and pollution (he cited nickel projects in Indonesia), and often lack timely weather warnings during cyclones — gaps that have resulted in illness and deaths and forced some communities to relocate and lose cultural ties to the sea.

The panel contrasted Asia’s gaps with Pacific practice. "We're more ocean than land," said Malika Nagasim Soi, a regional indigenous researcher from Nandana province, Fiji, describing how plural customary governance in several Pacific countries gives indigenous owners control of large shares of land and, in some constitutions, recognized rights over adjacent seabeds. She noted Fiji’s exception, where people may hold usage rights but not formal ownership of the water itself.

The research also documented outreach and mapping gaps: the team contacted more than 300 people for the Asian profile but identified only about 30 coastal indigenous experts, and of roughly 200 indigenous organizations the researchers mapped, only a small number worked on coastal issues. Those findings, Pizaro said, help explain why coastal indigenous people remain "invisible" in many policy debates.

Panelists highlighted community solutions. In one Pacific example, youth divers who discovered depleted fish stocks established a marine protected area that, despite early consultation frictions, "has become an income generator for that community," Soi said, and has drawn international researchers. The project illustrates how local knowledge and customary rules can support conservation while also enhancing food security and livelihoods.

Speakers emphasized cultural and ecological knowledge beyond fishing. Johnson described ritual practices that govern harvests and seasonal closures and said indigenous mapping identified "shipwreck ecosystems" — sunken structures that function as biodiverse reef habitat and had not been catalogued by mainstream science.

The World Bank-backed profiles and the panel discussion underscored calls for more policy recognition, better inclusion of indigenous experts in ocean planning and targeted investments in warning systems and legal recognition to reduce displacement and improve resilience. Pizaro closed by thanking Land is Life and World Bank PROBLUE support for advancing indigenous voices in ocean policy.