RRI organized and supported the following high-level events on the sidelines of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, which was held September 17-24, 2023 in New York.

WHAT: Annual Meeting of the Interlaken Group

WHEN: 9/15/23, 9:00-17:00 EDT 

This meeting marked the 10th anniversary of the Interlaken Group, which was founded by RRI as an informal network of leaders from influential companies, development finance institutions, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders in community land rights across the world. This meeting took stock of progress over the last decade. Participants unpacked emerging challenges and opportunities for influence over the next 10 years to continue to drive private sector support for community tenure rights and livelihoods. For information, contact Tim Derr.

WHAT: Dialogue on Community Rights & Climate Change: What future do we want?

WHEN: Sunday, 9/17/23, 9:00 -17:00 EDT

This is part of a new RRI Dialogue Series on Climate Futures. In partnership with Rainforest Foundation, Rainforest Foundation USA, and Forest Peoples Programme, RRI convened key actors and institutions engaged in market and non-market approaches to climate financing to discuss ways of strengthening support for community-led solutions and advance rights-based approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The dialogue sought to broaden the scope of dominant paradigms and address the limitations of existing arrangements through rightsholders-led debates on the futures that local peoples want, and the investments needed to create a more just, sustainable and climate resilient future for all. For details, contact Teresa Paterson.

WHAT: Path to Scale Annual Meeting

WHEN: Wednesday, 9/20/23, 9:00-17:00 EDT  

The Path to Scale (P2S), an informal network of donors, financial mechanisms, and their intermediaries (coordinated by the Rights and Resources Group and the Tenure Facility), held its annual meeting to assess progress, identify challenges and opportunities, and strategize on how to scale-up funding and other enabling factors to secure the land and resource rights, conservation, and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples to the levels necessary to meet 2030 climate and biodiversity targets. For information, contact Tim Derr.

WHAT: RRI Workshop on Advancing Rights-based Approaches to Area Conservation

WHEN: Thursday, 9/21/23, 8:30-17:00 EDT 

With the conclusion of negotiations on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in December 2022, it’s time to shift attention to ensuring that its targets on area-based conservation are implemented and monitored in keeping with rights-based approaches. This requires building collaboration across key actors who can influence rights-based approaches to implementation and monitoring of 30×30 targets. Within this context, this RRI workshop brought together a diverse group of leaders from Indigenous Peoples’ and local community, human rights, conservation and donor organizations to build consensus and collaboration on key aspects of a right-based approach to implement and monitor conservation area targets. The workshop was organized in partnership with the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, Campaign for Nature, and the ICCA Consortium. Read our report on the workshop’s outcomes.

WHAT: High Level event for Nature and People: From Ambition to Action

WHEN: 9/19/23 

The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC N&P)2, the Global Ocean Alliance (GOA)3, and the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature (LPN)4 united to convene a high level event to demonstrate transformational actions to tackle biodiversity loss. Over the past five years, leaders have recognized how fundamental nature is to livelihoods, the economy, and tackling other environmental crises. This has resulted in several crucial environmental decisions, including the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and an international legally binding instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, both of which recognize the rights and crucial role of Indigenous Peoples in implementation. These decisions also mark a crucial need to shift global focus from raising ambition on tackling biodiversity loss, to actually delivering on it by accelerating both financing and implementation on the ground. For information, contact Rachael Watson.