About the Initiative

Mission, Goals & Targets

Mission

RRI’s Mission is to support local communities’ and Indigenous Peoples’ struggles against poverty and marginalization by promoting greater global commitment and action towards policy, market and legal reforms that secure their rights to own, control and benefit from natural resources, especially land and forests.

Goals

The Rights and Resources Initiative will support communities, governments, donors and international institutions to combine efforts to advance two global goals:

1.    To substantially increase the forest area under local ownership and administration, with secure rights to conserve, use and trade products and services; and

2.    To dramatically reduce poverty in the forested areas of the world.

Targets

The Initiative will advocate two targets as global indicators of progress – both situated within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals:

1. To reduce by half the proportion of people in forest areas who live in extreme poverty by 2015.  The Initiative will encourage governments to adopt the necessary reforms, and provide the development flows required, to tackle poverty in forest areas.   

2. To double the global forest area under local ownership and administration, with secure rights to use and trade products and services, by 2015.  Many countries have made progress in strengthening and reforming forest tenure, but unclear rights remain the norm rather than the exception for the majority of the world’s forests and forest peoples.