A decade-long effort by RRI’s DRC Coalition has led to a progressive land policy in the country
In welcome news for India’s forest communities, the state of Odisha has approved 14 Community Rights and Community Forest Resource Rights titles for 24 villages in its Nayagarh district, under the country’s 2006 Forest Rights Act. The government’s move to grant these titles is praiseworthy for one key reason: they recognize women’s critical role in protecting community forests.
A new report by the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), a global partnership for successfully reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the World Bank’s fund for Enhancing Access to Benefits while Lowering Emissions (EnABLE), outlines tangible ways global communities can make inroads in the effort to mitigate climate change through strengthening Indigenous sovereignty.
At UNFCCC COP 26, new research shows Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold at least 958 million hectares of land in countries spanning most of the world’s endangered tropical forests – yet have legal rights to less than half of their lands. Community-held lands sequester over 250 billion metric tonnes of carbon, and lack of secure rights threatens to release much of this carbon into the atmosphere through deforestation.
Nature-Based Solutions are broadly defined as solutions to societal challenges that involve working with nature. When anchored in culturally appropriate solutions and the self-determined priorities of local peoples, nature-based actions have the potential to strengthen synergies, transform human-environment interactions, and effectively drive system-wide transformation.
A longtime defender of Indigenous rights in Canada, Dr. M.A (Peggy) Smith will lead the governance of Rights and Resources Initiative – a global coalition of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples and local community organizations.
Recognizing secure tenure rights for local communities and Indigenous Peoples is one of the key drivers of social peace and sustainable economic development. Addressing the common need for a platform to continue sharing experiences and knowledge, we helped establish the African Land Institutions Network for Community Rights (ALIN). To assess progress since meeting in Antananarivo, Madagascar in 2019, the 3rd ALIN Conference will be held in a hybrid format in Lomé, Togo and online from October 12-14, 2021.
A high-level discussion convened by RRI and the FCDO, UK sought to address the ownership gap in collective land rights to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.
To the west of Great Slave Lake, the second-largest lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories, is a plateau that towers 600 meters above the surrounding Mackenzie Valley. The plateau, which features a unique mosaic of boreal forest, wetlands, and lakes, and is home to dozens of at-risk species, including the woodland caribou, wood bison, and waterfowl, is known as the Edéhzhíe Dehcho Protected Area/National Wildlife Area (pronounced eh-day-shae.)
Secure rights to land are fundamental to enable Indigenous Peoples, and in particular, Indigenous women, to continue their effective stewardship of forests.
This analysis shows that the vast majority of tropical forested countries seeking to benefit from international forest carbon markets have yet to define in law and in practice the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples over carbon in their customary lands and territories.
RRI Partners and Collaborators launch initiative to help Nepal cope with devastating COVID-19 crisis.
Andy White (RRI), Gam Shimray (AIPP), and Samuel Nguiffo (CED Cameroun), send a letter on behalf of the RRI Coalition to Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International. The letter is a follow-up to an RRI meeting with Mr. Lambertini and his team, held on February 6, 2021.
Blood in the jungle, we demand justice.
RRI collaborator KVCO help formalize a mediation process between local communities and oil companies in Kerio Valley, enshrining community land rights.
Não há empoderamento político sem empoderamento econômico. Esse foi o princípio por trás de uma estratégia de 2019 da Coalizão da América Latina da RRI [Iniciativa de Direitos e Recursos] para analisar sistemas econômicos com base nos próprios conceitos de desenvolvimento das comunidades dentro de seus sistemas de propriedade comum.
The fires in Similipal National Park and Tiger Reserve have brought to the fore the tug of war between the forest department and the community for biosphere ownership.
Thailand’s legal frameworks for biodiversity conservation and international climate commitments omit the important role that its Indigenous Peoples play as stewards of the environment.
Across the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 has created unprecedented challenges for RRI members and their communities. In many cases though, it has also led to opportunities for empowering local communities. This was the case for Social Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SESDev), a Liberian non-profit that works on natural resource governance rights.
There is no political empowerment without economic empowerment. That was the principle behind a 2019 strategy by RRI’s Latin America coalition to analyze economic systems based on communities' own concepts of development within their collective tenure systems.
The Amazon’s peoples and representative organizations, threatened by the ongoing pandemic, are calling upon supporters across the world to join their fight to protect the Amazonian territories from this crisis. The virtual gathering, "The Jungle Screams: Voices of the Amazon," will analyze and build proposals to fight Covid-19, climate change, patriarchy, gender-based violence, and political systems that hijack democracy. This event is open to participation.
As rising pollution levels, accelerating climate change, and population growth accumulate pressure on the world’s freshwater resources, there has never been a greater need to legally secure the freshwater rights of the Indigenous peoples and local communities who claim and steward over half of the world’s land — including vital watersheds that sustain healthy aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
A new operational guide is set to help Indigenous and local communities sustainably manage their forest concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
In May 2017, Kenya’s Ogiek people, a hunting and gathering community, won a landmark victory before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights after…