As global leaders prepare to gather in Belém, Brazil, this November for the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30), the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and its global partners are calling for the summit to serve as a turning point for Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities who safeguard the world’s forests and biodiversity.
As the global community prepares for UNFCCC COP30, hosted for the first time in the Amazon region of Brazil, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and its coalition of over 200 partners, collaborators, and allies have been sending a clear and powerful message for months: Earth’s #DefendersLeadTheWay on climate action.
This new report highlights RRI's twenty years of impact on communities’ collective land and resource rights and outlines the path forward to secure their future worldwide.
This was by far the largest UNCCD CoP to date (the previous CoP15 in 2022 had 7,000 participants), but even in an increasingly crowded space, Indigenous voices rang loud and clear, achieving several important breakthroughs.
The Rights and Resource Group has selected Deborah Sanchez, an Indigenous Miskitu woman from Honduras to lead its funding mechanism, CLARIFI (the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative). Deborah will officially assume her role on September 11, 2023.