The Women in Global South Alliance (WiGSA) hosted its second strategic meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal from April 30–May 2, 2024. Armed with a feeling of sisterhood and common purpose, women leaders from 11 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America overcame jet lag to meet in person to discuss strategies on how best to support the women and girls they represent.

Press Release—Afro-descendant Leaders’ Demands for COP16: Recognize Land Rights, Key to Conserving Biodiversity in Latin America

A declaration released at a press briefing on June 15 highlights significant overlap between lands claimed by Afro-descendant Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and biodiversity hotspots; calling for the inclusion of the term Afro-descendants in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Reflections on the 2024 World Bank Land Conference

After a five-year hiatus, the World Bank held its Land Conference on May 13–17 in Washington, D.C., bringing together over 1,000 practitioners, donors, advocates, civil society representatives, and government officials. The takeaway was clear: The case for land tenure security as a prerequisite for climate, development, and biodiversity goals has now firmly been made, but many of the same challenges persist in advancing rights-based agendas.

A network of networks: RRI launches new coalition guide

This platform helps coalition members, donors, and allies gain a better understanding of RRI’s global network and documents how each member contributes to the collective mission of advancing local peoples' land, territory, freshwater, and resource rights.

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.

Saamaka Toko: A battle for the land rights of Suriname’s Saamaka people

The Surinamese Government has allowed the construction of a large road and extensive logging in the Saamaka territory without local peoples' consent, in violation of orders from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. We are calling on the international community to #StandWithSaamakaPeople to protect over 1 million hectares of the Amazonian rainforest.

The Soto-Cerrón Law and deforestation in Peru

On 9 January 2024, Congress approved Law 31973—signed by Alejandro Soto and Waldemar Cerrón—which modifies Forestry Law 29763 of 2011. This modification will cause chaos in the management of Peru's forests and an acceleration of deforestation, going against global trends to limit climate change and biodiversity loss.

The recent release of the Second Edition of Who Owns the World’s Land? offers an important moment to take stock of the global state of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community land rights recognition. The data in the report covers 73 countries, which cumulatively comprise 85% of the world's land area, and gives a comprehensive snapshot of the global landscape for community land rights at a critical moment for people and the planet. Here are five of the biggest takeaways from the report.

For more than 10 years, the LandWise Law Library has grown into an essential resource on family, land, and natural resource rights under the care of Landesa and Resource Equity. As Resource Equity closes its doors, RRI is thrilled to announce that it will carry the LandWise Law Library on through its next chapter.

A new resource seeks to support companies and investors in understanding the shared value community monitoring could add to their operations and investments, and outlines principles to help them build productive partnerships with communities to secure their land tenure and improve compliance with environmental and social standards and commitments.

On December 6, RRI, the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership (CRP), and the ICCA Consortium—in partnership with the Canadian Research Chair in Human Rights, Health, and the Environment, Montreal International and the Christensen Fund—will co-host a pre-COP15 dialogue on Indigenous and community leadership in conservation.

On Gender and Water Day at CoP27, women in the Global South make waves

November 14 marks Gender Day and Water Day at CoP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt. We must take a moment to recognize how Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women and girls are leaders in climate change mitigation and adaptation and integral to attaining the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

RRI is excited to announce the launch of its new online Tenure Tool. This platform, hosted on RRI’s website, will give rightsholders, researchers, activists, policymakers, and the public free and easy access to qualitative and quantitative data on the forest tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, local communities, and the women within those communities.

Conservation Must Go Hand-in-Hand with Communities: A Path Forward in the Amazon

This analysis highlights the urgent need to work on a rights-based approach to conservation in the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon considering the multiple collective rights of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendant Peoples. The study proposes a roadmap to transform, strengthen and expand existing conservation legal frameworks.

There is a future if there is truth: The Truth Commission’s final report on the armed conflict in Colombia

Following more than three years of investigation into the armed conflict in Colombia, the Truth Commission, which was created by the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, published the first chapter of its final report on June 28, 2022. This blog post looks at some of its key findings and testimonies.