This report offers RRI's updated assessment of the status and strength of Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, and local communities’ statutory forest tenure rights across 35 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
This second edition of the State of Funding for Tenure Rights provides an updated analysis of international donor funding for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples in tropical countries from 2011 to 2024. This edition includes an expanded scope to all terrestrial ecosystems, recognizing the importance of tracking funding beyond forests.
Through examples of Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, and local communities’ movements from the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, the Enggano island in Indonesia, India's Bastar region, the Sinangoe in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and Colombia, the report presents best practices from communities defending their territories and cultures.
The Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework’s targets cannot be achieved without the rights, leadership, and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities. This new RRI report with Forest Peoples Programme and the ICCA Consortium analyzes the legal frameworks of 30 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and finds that although most have potential pathways for legally recognized community-led conservation, many have yet to formalize it as a distinct and additional means of achieving national conservation priorities.
This new report presents the results of the second phase of a collaborative research analysis between RRI and WiGSA. It showcases the lack of funding for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women and highlights the need for the new funding Pledge anticipated at COP30 to concretely include a gender-responsive perspective.
This report represents two decades of working together across continents, cultures, and movements to build a more just and sustainable planet for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples—particularly the women and youth within them.
As part of the international meeting "Afro-descendant Voices on the Road to COP30," held in Brasilia from April 1–4, 2025, representatives of the International Coalition of Territories and Afro-descendant Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean (CITAFRO) launched the “Brasilia Declaration.” In the declaration, CITAFRO calls for effective participation in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém.
This report examines the current state of play as countries prepare for the operationalization of Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, offering a systematic analysis of the recognition of the carbon rights held by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as of August 2024.
This study provides an up-to-date assessment of the status of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women’s forest tenure rights across 35 key forest countries in the Global South. In doing so, it aims to inform and encourage gender-transformative actions by governments and other stakeholders impacting community forests, lands and other resources.
This analysis aims to highlight the contexts and challenges related to the promotion of leadership skills of Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities women based on the life experiences of three women in Latin America who have achieved leadership roles in their families, organizations, communities and at the national and international level.
From August 19–22, 2024, public forest agency leaders within the MegaFlorestais network from some of the world's most forested countries met in the state of Pará in northcentral Brazil. They gathered to learn about ongoing forest management programs, progress and challenges of elevating the role of community-led conservation, preventing forest loss, and promoting restoration and reforestation around the world.
This policy brief summarizes findings from a study undertaken by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and McGill University to systematically analyze the carbon rights held by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
In response to the dearth of data on funding for women and the need to support international advocacy promoting direct funding to Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women’s groups and organizations, the Rights and Resources Initiative initiated a bottom-up research effort to build a baseline for measuring funding levels reaching community women on the ground and assess the extent to which existing grants and funding mechanisms are considered fit-for-purpose.
This Atlas maps the territorial presence of Afro-descendant Peoples in 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the state of recognition of their territorial rights, their overlap with areas that are important for regulating and mitigating climate change, and their contributions to conservation efforts.
This report aims to influence the localization agenda and improve bilateral policies and practices to ensure that more direct, fit-for-purpose support reaches Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples and their supporting organizations to secure tenure rights and conserve key ecosystems and biodiversity.
Rights and Resources Initiative and Rainforest Foundation Norway are thrilled to announce the launch of the Path to Scale dashboard, a new open-source online tool that gives easy access to donor funding data for Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, and local communities’ tenure and forest guardianship.
Discover the power of collective action: learn about some of our pivotal successes of 2023 that energize us as we embark upon our 2024 workplans.
On 17 September 2023, over 70 rightsholder representatives and their allies joined together for a global dialogue on how climate finance can or should support their vision for the future in a world impacted by climate change. Held under Chatham House Rules, the dialogue sought to go beyond known gaps and challenges to address the critical needs of rightsholders and begin defining pathways that can support a more just, equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and climate-resilient future for all.
Growing recognition of the key roles of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities in resource governance has led to many international commitments, but taking actions to advance human rights-based approaches to climate and conversation remains a challenge. This policy brief explores the structural constraints to rights-based action and shares a framework to help implement these commitments.
From June 26–30, 2023, public forest agency leaders within the MegaFlorestais network from some of the world's most forested countries met in Lake Tahoe, California for the first time since before the Covid-19 pandemic. They gathered to learn about ongoing forest management programs, share trends in forest policy, strengthen relationships, expand collective knowledge, and promote strategic innovation.
This report presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date picture of global progress towards the legal recognition of community-based land tenure, and offers a baseline against which the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework 2030 Targets can be monitored.
This document shares emerging ideas, principles, and good practices to socialize the concept of community monitoring among companies and investors in land-based sectors, as well as outline steps they can take to meaningfully engage with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples to monitor and respond to the potential environmental and human rights impacts of their operations, supply chains, or investments.
Afro-descendant Peoples’ Territories in Biodiversity Hotspots across Latin America and the Caribbean
This study seeks to raise awareness of the territorial presence of Afro-descendant Peoples in 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although Afro-descendant Peoples in the region have been fighting for a place in international climate and conservation debates, not having defined boundaries for their ancestral lands has been an obstacle to adequately establishing how important their territories are for protecting biodiversity.
The engagement of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities must be driven by their self-determination and potential as main actors in a multifunctional transformation process. This process must be grafted on climate change mitigation and adaptation, nature and biodiversity conservation, landscape restoration, radical food systems change, the empowerment of women and youth, as well as land and resources conflict management.