This year's Climate Week theme, "We Can. We Will", focused on the urgent need for action, provided the backdrop for 25 leaders from Indigenous Peoples, NGOs, Civil Society and donors to discuss what they can do to ensure that the rights and priorities of communities are at the center of global area-based conservation efforts. This report brings together the most important aspects of this dialogue.
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 edition is in Bahasa Indonesia; full English report is coming soon! Co-authored by 16 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.
Eighteen young leaders from 10 Latin American countries call on governments,donors, and grassroots organizations to include youth in decision-making that impacts their territorial rights, and to strengthen their understanding of biodiversity management and conservation efforts.
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.
More than 200 participants from 20 countries sign a Declaration inviting government actors, policymakers, international donors, the private sector, civil society, and allies to promote the implementation of the Forum's Roadmap by strengthening and promoting the engagement of Indigenous and local community women and girls in Central Africa in biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.
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.
Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples must be recognized and supported as key actors and leaders in combatting climate change and conserving the Earth’s natural diversity to have any hope of reaching global climate and biodiversity goals. This paper provides an initial overview of emerging experience with “fit for purpose” approaches to channel resources at scale to collective rightsholders and their supporting organizations to conserve and manage forests and rural landscapes.
In coordination with 20 grassroots organizations and researchers of Afro-descendant Peoples, RRI, PNC, and OTEC carried out a joint investigation to identify the presence, lands, and territories of the Afro-descendant People in Latin America and the Caribbean. For the first time, a freely accessible cartographic viewer gathers decisive data in the region on the territorial presence and the significant relationship between these territories and areas of great importance for the conservation and stability of the terrestrial and oceanic climate.
Over the course of 2022, one hundred leaders of grassroots networks in 22 countries—men, women, and youth among Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples—were interviewed about their hopes, dreams, and fears for the future.
Pastoralists are well adapted to harsh environments and have deep knowledge about their natural resources. They have also suffered from drought, famine, political interference, physical insecurity, armed aggression, increasing impoverishment, and marginalization. Despite these obstacles, pastoralists have long managed their lands for various purposes including livestock mobility, which depends on large commonly owned landscapes, knowledge of ecosystem productivity, and on the ability to negotiate access to resources.
This report identifies possible pathways towards the integration of a rights-based approach in the legal conservation frameworks of Colombia and Peru. It does so in the context of tenure rights recognition for Indigenous Peoples (IP) and Afro-descendant Peoples (ADP) as an effective strategy for biodiversity protection in the Amazon. With this in mind, it highlights opportunities for implementing a rights-based approach within current and medium-term conservation frameworks and policies in both countries.
This report assesses donor funding for IPs’ and LCs’ tenure and conservation between 2011 and 2020 to learn from historical trends and outline key opportunities to improve the effectiveness of this funding over the next five years. It proposes to make donor funding more fit for purpose—which means that climate, conservation, and rights funding is channeled in ways that are relevant and appropriate for IPs and LCs and ensures funding engagements are led by their organizations—and flexible, long-term, gender-inclusive, timely and accessible, and mutually accountable.
The historic US$1.7 billion Pledge made at the UNFCCC CoP26 in Glasgow by governments and donors in support of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ collective…
This report argues that to effectively and equitably mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss, new conservation modalities are needed to end exclusionary approaches, embrace human rights-based strategies, and advance the recognition of the land, forest, water, and territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities who customarily own over half of the world’s lands.
This summary highlights findings of three RRI studies conducted in 2020 as they relate to Liberia, and explains what the findings of these three studies mean for Liberia and aims to equip local communities and civil society organizations (CSOs) with data to advance their advocacy work to influence future reforms, and help the government, donors, private sector actors, and conservationists make informed decisions.
This research provides a timely reminder of the global significance of community-held lands and territories; their importance for the protection, restoration, and sustainable use of tropical forestlands across the world; and the critical gaps in the international development architecture that have so far undermined progress towards the legal recognition of such lands and territories.
This summary highlights findings of three RRI studies conducted in 2020 as they relate to the DRC. This document explains what these three studies mean for the DRC and aims to equip local communities and civil society organizations (CSOs) with data to advance their advocacy work to influence future reforms, and help the government, donors, private sector actors, and conservationists make informed decisions.
After more than a decade of engaging with Indigenous Peoples and local communities through REDD+ readiness and implementation efforts, participant countries of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) have gained insights into what is needed to strengthen communal and collective land forest tenure. This comprehensive report provides an assessment of countries affiliated with the FCPF's Carbon Fund and lays out cross-cutting challenges as well as opportunities to advance Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' land rights.
This summary highlights Kenya-specific findings of three RRI studies conducted in 2020. This document will explain what the findings of these three studies mean for Kenya, and aims to equip local communities and civil society organizations (CSOs) with data to advance their advocacy work to influence future reforms and help the government, donors, private sector actors, and conservationists make informed decisions.
Este estudo analisa a situação do reconhecimento legal dos direitos dos Povos Indígenas, comunidades locais e Povos Afrodescendentes ao carbono em suas terras e territórios em 31 países da África, Ásia e América Latina.10 Juntos, esses países defendem quase 70 por cento das florestas tropicais do mundo11 e representam pelo menos 62 por cento do potencial total de solução climática natural viável identificado por McKinsey et al. (2021),12 e, portanto, a maior parte das reduções de emissões baseadas na natureza e oportunidades de compensação de carbono em países com florestas tropicais e subtropicais.