Washington, D.C. (September 30, 2025)—Nearly two decades after the global adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and a decade into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new report by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) reveals that the legal protection of community forest rights under national law remains dangerously inadequate.
Despite increasing global recognition of the fundamental role Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities play in stewarding the world’s forests—and decades of advocacy from rightsholders and their allies—many governments have failed to translate international commitments into robust, enforceable national legislation. The result: a deepening chasm between legal recognition and practical implementation of forest rights, all while unprecedented levels of violence and criminalization; displacement and land grabbing; erosion of civic space; and rollback of aid continue to put the human rights of these communities at heightened risk.
“The evidence is clear. Even as we observe global progress in recognizing rights on paper, recognition at the national level is not advancing consistently and we are not seeing equivalent action where it matters most: in the lived realities of communities,” said Chloe Ginsburg, Associate Director, Tenure Tracking at RRI and one of the report’s co-authors. “This is not just a legal gap. It’s a justice crisis, and a climate crisis.”
A decade of mixed progress
The report, Seeds for Reform, is RRI’s most comprehensive review to date of community-based forest tenure rights, assessing 104 legal frameworks across 35 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—regions that encompass about 80% of forests in these three regions and 42% of global forest area.
Drawing on more than a decade of tenure rights monitoring, this analysis offers unparalleled insight into the status, strength, and evolution of community forest rights, while highlighting the legal gaps that continue to threaten community stewardship in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, 11 new legal frameworks recognizing community forest rights have been adopted across 7 countries, primarily in Africa.
But the report warns that this progress is not as promising as it seems. The report shows that more legal frameworks do not necessarily mean stronger rights for communities. In fact, the least protected rights, like the ability to exclude third parties or hold land in perpetuity, are the most essential to securing long-term, intergenerational stewardship.
Most of these legal reforms also stop short of guaranteeing full ownership. Only five of the 11 frameworks newly recognized since 2016 grant communities the complete bundle of rights necessary to be considered legal owners of their forests. Others fall short, failing to grant real control over land use, governance, or protection from outside encroachment.
A growing gap between recognition and reality
The report paints a stark picture of how slow and inconsistent national progress has been, despite continued expansion of protections under international law and decades of advocacy from rightsholders and their allies.
While nearly half (46%) of the legal frameworks assessed were reformed between 2016 and 2024, only three resulted in meaningful expansion of community rights, while others experienced rollbacks.
Today, fewer than half (42%) of all frameworks fully recognize communities as forest owners under national law. Even where rights are recognized on paper, a critical gap remains between the legal recognition of tenure rights and the implementation of these rights in practice.
“The gap between legal recognition and the lived realities of communities and community women leaves them vulnerable to rights violations and encroachment of territories, especially as climate, conservation, and development pressures intensify alongside rising authoritarianism and rapidly shrinking civil spaces in countries across the world,” said Isabel Davila Pereira, Legal Analyst for RRI and a co-author.
Incomplete protections for communities and women
The report also highlights the persistent lack of protections for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women. Only two frameworks explicitly protect women’s right to vote in local governance, and just five ensure their right to participate in community leadership. Most laws remain silent on gender inclusion, even as women are essential to forest management and intergenerational knowledge transmission.
In addition, while nearly all legal frameworks allow some form of forest use for communities, legal recognition of the cultural, spiritual, and religious significance of forest areas is often lacking. This undermines the full expression of communities’ relationship with their lands, which are core not only to their well-being but to their forest stewardship.
For the first time, the report assesses how well national laws uphold the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), a foundational right under international law. The findings are troubling: only half of legal frameworks recognize FPIC at all, and those that do often include vague language that limits its practical application and leaves room for exploitation by government or private actors.
While 82% of frameworks recognize some form of due process and compensation rights, nearly one-third only provide the right to judicial recourse, without requiring prior notice or consultation for affected communities. This falls short of international human rights standards and leaves communities with few tools to contest land grabs or displacement.
“This is not just about land. It’s about justice, autonomy, and survival,”said Léonie Ngalula Mputu, who leads gender affairs at Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autochtones (DGPA) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “There is an urgent need for governments to undertake enforcement measures to implement existing laws. Failure to do so is failing to uphold even the most basic protections for the communities that guard the planet’s most vital ecosystems.”
A turning point for climate, rights, and justice
Current trends, including the rise of large-scale extractivism, greenwashed climate initiatives, authoritarian crackdowns, and shrinking civic space, are compounding legal gaps and threatening the modest gains achieved over the last two decades.
Yet solutions are within reach. Legal frameworks that recognize customary and community-based rights consistently provide stronger protections than conservation or use-oriented models. When governments implement frameworks that truly reflect the realities of collective land governance, especially those that center women’s roles, outcomes for forests, people, and the planet improve.
With only five years remaining to meet the SDGs, the report urges governments, donors, civil society, and the private sector to act decisively.
“This report confirms what Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities have long said: recognition must be more than symbolic,” concluded RRI’s Chloe Ginsburg. “As climate action accelerates, so must the legal protections for those who protect the world’s forests. The global community cannot afford to leave these communities behind. Their rights are not a footnote to climate action. They are the foundation.”