Unforeseen threats to indigenous and community land rights can arise quickly and require rapid action to be countered effectively. Just as rapidly, critical windows of opportunity to secure rights can appear–and if not seized, can easily be lost.
The Strategic Response Mechanism (SRM) is designed to enable timely, flexible responses to these unforeseen opportunities and threats. It complements RRI’s annual planning process by allowing for rapid response to unexpected and time-limited opportunities. Up to US$100,000 can be dispersed to grantees in as quickly as a few weeks, allowing Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) to be effective in shifting political landscapes.
Since 2008, RRI has used the SRM to influence important legislation concerning land and resource rights, such as supporting civil society efforts to ensure passage of groundbreaking legislation that recognizes community land rights in Liberia. SRM projects have also been used to effectively respond to urgent threats, such as resisting the expansion of an oil palm company’s operations on indigenous lands in the Peruvian Amazon, as well as overturning a judicial ruling that had revoked traditional land rights from forest communities for the development of a superhighway in Nigeria. The SRM has also helped maximize opportunities to influence the private sector toward respecting local communities’ rights to their lands and resources.
SRM proposals are evaluated and approved through a simple, expedited process. In order for an activity or project to qualify for SRM support, the activity must meet all five criteria:
Search and view all past SRM projects below.
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.
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.
In Nepal, the local government of Gorkha District’s Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality recently adopted a new law to formally recognize and preserve the local community’s Shagya tradition of nonviolence.
The International Coalition for the defense, conservation, protection of Territories, the environment, land use, and climate change of the Afro-descendant Peoples of Latin America and…
Women leaders from Africa, Asia, and North and South America gather in Brazzaville to strengthen the global solidarity movement for women-led initiatives to protect biodiversity and build climate resilience.