Pritzker finalist Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim in TIME: ‘We Know How to Keep the Balance of Nature’. Why Including Indigenous People Is Vital to Solving Climate Change

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, from the Mbororo pastoralist community in Chad, has spent a decade trying to get international policy on climate change to consider perspectives from indigenous communities like her own. In the lead up to the historic 2015 climate-change meetings in Paris, she was designated as co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, established in 2008 as the caucus for indigenous people participating in the U.N. Climate Summit. And she has worked with the government of Chad on their Nationally Determined Contributions plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a feasible way.

Ibrahim tells TIME what lessons indigenous communities hold for the rest of the world in protecting the environment and mitigating and adapting to climate change.