On average, tenure interventions are good for people and the planet

With surging international, national, and sub-national policy attention to land tenure security (LTS) in developing countries in recent years, it is timely to ask: What have been the effects of thousands of efforts to improve it in dozens of developing countries? To date, almost all efforts to answer this question have been relatively small-scale, discrete studies within the boundaries of a single country.

Historically snubbed by exclusionary conservation, Indigenous and local communities’ role is integral to achieving the UN’s ambitious 2030 global biodiversity agenda. Over 1.65 billion Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendants hold the key to preventing a global biodiversity collapse. Recognizing tenure rights of Indigenous and local communities is projected to cost less than 1 percent of the cost of resettling the populations in biodiverse areas.

[Portuguese] Carta aberta da RRI à WWF Internacional

Em nome da Coalizão Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), uma rede internacional de Povos Indígenas, Quilombolas, organizações comunitárias locais e seus aliados, estou escrevendo para informá-lo de nosso profundo desalento com o recém-lançado Relatório Planeta Vivo 2020.

Governance Governing Government

The importance of governance has gained momentum and wider meaning, yet it remains a confusing concept. Edmund Barrow FRSA looks at what it means in practice and suggests some ideas for understanding and supporting local governance.

Forest restoration and democracy: Making communities visible in Madagascar

Recent discussions at the Global Landscapes Forum in Accra, Ghana, which revolved around tenure policy and forest landscape restoration in Madagascar, shed light on some of the issues impeding progress toward achieving positive social and ecological restoration outcomes globally.

Representatives from 13 governmental land agencies in Africa announced today in Antananarivo, Madagascar the launching of the Network of African Land Institutions for Community Land Rights (ALIN) to serve as a platform for exchange and mutual support to advance opportunities to secure indigenous and community land rights across the region.

‘Indigenous people have been effective stewards of biodiversity globally’

Washington DC-based Rights and Resources Initiative has done a wonderful job of collating dozens of studies that show that indigenous people and other forest-dependent groups have been effective stewards of forests and biodiversity in hundreds of sites throughout the world.

Farming communities abused at troubled DRC mega-farm, campaigners say

“They started the project by taking away communities’ land without their consent, using intimidation and all kinds of misplaced government power to evict them from their own customary land,” said Kipalu, who now works for the Rights and Resources Initiative in Washington, D.C.

President Iván Duque, Protect Social Activists

The world is turning its eyes toward Colombia as the new president, Iván Duque, takes office. Rights groups and peace activists are calling on the government to ensure that both the peace process and the country’s social leaders are protected.

The award recognizes actors from Cameroonian society who have made significant contributions to environmental protection and the improvement of local livelihoods. In this case, it acknowledged the Coalition’s efforts to inform and influence Cameroon’s land reform process and forthcoming land legislation in favor of communities.