Ep 6: Land is Life with Piya Macliing Malayao

Welcome to episode six of the Climate, Mind and Behavior Podcast. Each episode, we’ll explore groundbreaking intersections between climate change, resilience, contemplative practice and human behavior.

Piya Macliing Malayao is the 27-year-old Secretary General of Katribu, a national alliance of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines. She’s also the Land is Life Regional Coordinator for South Asia and the Pacific.

Land is Life is a global coalition of communities, organizations, and activists working together to protect the rights of indigenous peoples through food sovereignty, women’s rights, economic empowerment, land rights and climate action. The coalition comprises over thirty organizations across Africa, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific from small women’s collectives to regional networks.

Piya Macliing Malayao was part of a group of Land is Life representatives at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues this Spring. According to the UN Population Fund, there are about 370 million Indigenous peoples in some 70 countries across the globe. While this is only about 5% of the global population, Land is Life says indigenous peoples speak 60% of the world’s languages, live within 25% of the world’s forests, and protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity. On the last day of the conference, I met Piya Macliing Malayao outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

To learn more about Piya Macliing Malayao and her work with indigenous rights, visit Katribu.org and LandisLife.org. Our Theme music is composed by Zoë Keating. You can find her music on iTunes or on her website, Zoë Keating.com. The photograph for this episode is by Bulatlat.