Co-authored with 15 organizations from across Asia—spanning youth groups, Indigenous networks, and ally organizations—this new report collates and brings to the fore the experiences and leadership of youth activists from across the continent into a call to action.
This October, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s National Assembly passed the country’s first-ever legislation on land-use planning. The historic bill’s passage is a result of years-long advocacy by civil society organizations led by RRI collaborator Centre for Innovative Technologies and Sustainable Development.
From September 12–14, 2023, the African Land Institutions Network for Community Rights (ALIN) will hold its 4th regional conference in Arusha, Tanzania. Land institutions from over a dozen countries will share lived experiences, opportunities, and challenges to further the community land rights agenda in Africa, with Indigenous and local community women, youth, and pastoralists taking center stage.
Eight local communities in northern Ecuador are victims of so-called "green grabbing" by a private environmental services company. To defend their customary rights in the absence of collective land titles, the communities have launched an advocacy campaign with RRI’s support.
In Nepal, the local government of Gorkha District’s Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality recently adopted a new law to formally recognize and preserve the local community’s Shagya tradition of nonviolence.
Members of the new network agree to create more documentation on land rights and governance processes for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women; call for strengthening advocacy capacity.
The socio-environmental conflict in Los Pozos inspection of San Vicente del Caguán is unsustainable. The Chinese company, Emerald Energy Plc, repeatedly violates the country's environmental laws and the Colombian government continues to fail to intervene.
P2B, a peasants' organization based in Banten, Indonesia, is a leading actor in the local struggle for agrarian reform and collective land tenure rights.
Nepal's Indigenous Tsum Nubri community achieves a key legislative victory in maintaining traditional methods of forest governance.
RRI marked the beginning of 2023 with a global dialogue on Rights-Based Conservation and Climate Approaches, co-hosted with the Embassy of Sweden in Washington DC.
On December 6, RRI, the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership (CRP), and the ICCA Consortium—in partnership with the Canadian Research Chair in Human Rights, Health, and the Environment, Montreal International and the Christensen Fund—will co-host a pre-COP15 dialogue on Indigenous and community leadership in conservation.
This keynote address was shared in person on July 21, 2022 at the IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress in Kigali, Rwanda. Patrick calls on governments to leverage the cultural diversity of Africa to craft new conservation models that legally recognize and secure the tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as a just and viable solution to the global biodiversity crisis.
November 14 marks Gender Day and Water Day at CoP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt. We must take a moment to recognize how Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women and girls are leaders in climate change mitigation and adaptation and integral to attaining the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
RRI is excited to announce the launch of its new online Tenure Tool. This platform, hosted on RRI’s website, will give rightsholders, researchers, activists, policymakers, and the public free and easy access to qualitative and quantitative data on the forest tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, local communities, and the women within those communities.
At CoP26 in Glasgow, 22 donors made a historic commitment to contribute $1.7 billion to support Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights to their lands and forests. Almost one year later, questions abound over the Pledge’s disbursement, impact, and accessibility.
Following more than three years of investigation into the armed conflict in Colombia, the Truth Commission, which was created by the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, published the first chapter of its final report on June 28, 2022. This blog post looks at some of its key findings and testimonies.
The Stockholm+50 associated event aimed to highlight the role and importance of Indigenous peoples and local communities in safeguarding the world’s forests, ecosystems, and biodiversity. The event was one of three collaborative events held on June 1st at Sida ahead ofStockholm+50, co-arranged by Sida, The Tenure Facility, SwedBio, The Rights and Resource Initiative, and the Focali – SIANI Dialogue Forum.
Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and the Chepkitale Indigenous Peoples' Development Project (CIPDP) organized a site visit to Chepkitale to learn from the Ogiek of Mt. Elgon and shine light on the transformative role of community-led conservation in protecting Kenya's biodiversity-rich forests.
When members of the Indonesia-based AsM Law Office landed in Monrovia, Liberia this June, they had a two-fold agenda for their two week exchange with leaders of Liberian civil society.
Rights and Resources Initiative expresses its solidarity with the leaders of the Indigenous rights movement in Ecuador who are being criminalized for exercising their legitimate right to mobilize and defend their human rights.
A new study led by biologists at University of Amsterdam shows that the minimum land area requiring urgent conservation attention to safeguard Earth’s biodiversity is 64 million square km, equalling 44% of the planet’s terrestrial area.
Global trade, consumption, population growth, and urbanization drive transformations that, in part, drive nature’s destruction. The World Economic Forum ranks biodiversity loss as a global top-five risk. Clearly, protecting the environment should be high on political and policy agendas—but too often environmental governance is weak and policy implementation neglected.
We are delighted to share that Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) has received an unrestricted grant of USD 15 million from Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to support the recognition of land and resource rights of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities across the world – including the women within these groups.
The increased interest in carbon markets comes with a number of risks. Many forest carbon offsetting schemes are located in lands historically claimed, inhabited, and used by Indigenous Peoples and local communities but oftentimes the rights of these communities have not been secured, putting their well-being at risk — and threatening the future of carbon markets.