Empowering India's Tribal Communities: Bridging Sustainable Development Goals With Indigenous Knowledge And Rights

The tribal populations of India have remarkable cultural features and connections with nature, but they experience several issues such as poverty, marginalization, and displacement from their land, as well as exclusion in development efforts. Moreover, the target audience of the movement is tribal communities, which mostly remain sidelined. Although the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015 were aimed at addressing poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation, the strategies developed so far have not sufficiently addressed the specific needs of the tribal population. To understand what links there are between the tribal communities of India and the SDGs by focusing on the most relevant goals, which are no poverty (SDG 1), quality education (SDG 4), gender equality (SDG 5), climate action (SDG 13), and life on land (SDG 15). It also seeks to explain the challenges associated with the tribe and their contribution to promoting sustainability the community has been engaged in biodiversity preservation through land management. It argues the need to make tribal voices more heard and protect their right to speak in SDG implementation initiatives. Therefore, it urges attention to the ongoing SD approach to eliminating ‘tribal people,’ as this unfinished business cannot be addressed without the significant partnership of the Indian tribal population.