In the climate and development arenas, the most current alarm being sounded is for rights –securing the land rights and freedoms of Indigenous peoples, local communities and the marginalized members therein. How can these custodians of a quarter of the world’s terrestrial surface be expected to care for their traditional lands if the lands don’t, in fact, belong to them? Or, worse, if they’re criminalized and endangered for doing so?

At this year' Global Landscape Forum (GLF 2019), one message was loud and clear: diversity is key to restoration and sustainable landscape management, more specifically the emphasis on a variety of viewpoints and stories, is what will help us reach our goals!

By Kathleen Buckingham and Lars Laestadius

This is the third installment of WRI’s blog series, New Perspectives on Restoration. The series aims to share WRI’s views on restoration, dispel myths, and explore restoration opportunities throughout the world.

By Kathleen Buckingham

Trees have become an iconic image of environmentalism, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we should plant millions of them.

This year's Goldman Environmental Prize winner says the battle for land rights in Liberia is just getting underway.  Alfred Brownell is the recipient of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize and founder of Green Advocates an NGO and academic at Northeastern University School of Law

Author: Ahmadou Aly Mbaye

Editor's Note: 

There is a strong and compelling environment and development case to be made for securing indigenous and community lands. Securing collective land rights offers a low-cost, high-reward investment for developing country governments and their partners to meet national development objectives and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Securing community lands is also a cost-effective climate mitigation measure for countries when compared to other carbon capture and storage approaches.

Imagine a world where sustainable development is no longer an oxymoron, one where the Earth is economically and ecologically stable and food and energy needs are met. It’s a place where habitats are preserved and pollution is limited.

Don’t worry – you’re not alone if you can’t.

But according to a recent study published in The Ecological Society of America, this vision is not just imaginable, but it’s attainable. And by 2050 no less.

• Nearly five years after Friends of the Earth U.S. reported about escalating conflict between farmers in the village of Lunjuk on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and palm oil company PT Sandabi Indah Lestari — or PT SIL — those communities remain in conflict with PT SIL, which supplies Wilmar International, the world’s largest palm oil trader.

By 2050, two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. How cities develop will determine whether we can reduce economic and racial inequality, effectively address climate change, and meet many of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development goals. The human rights movement can help move cities in the right direction, through more engagement in municipal-level policy and advocacy, and through greater attention to the growing corporate influence within our cities.

The Sengwer are an indigenous hunter-gatherer people living along the slopes of the Cherangany Hills in the western highlands of Kenya. Their estimated population is 33,187.

We cannot restore tropical forests without restoring the rights of their traditional owners.

Implementing a coordinated global response to curb demand for energy and eliminate further deforestation would reduce the need to deploy artificial carbon dioxide removal technologies, according to a decisive report from the U.N. scientific panel on climate change.