Greater international support for indigenous land rights and livelihoods is a cost-effective way to limit climate change, PNAS study

Indigenous lands and protected areas in the Amazon contribute far less to climate change than the rest of the rainforest since they account for only 10 percent of carbon emissions while covering 52 percent of the region, a study shows.

• More than 2,000 communal landholdings known as ejidos, and communities, have organized themselves to carry out sustainable management of forests in their territory.
• In states such as Oaxaca, Michoacán, Durango, Chihuahua and Quintana Roo there are examples of communities that have managed to conserve forests and their biodiversity, while generating jobs and other benefits for the population.
• Mining, organized crime, illegal timber trafficking, and the tax regime are just some of the challenges facing community forest management in Mexico.

• The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is an isolated group of mountains situated along Colombia’s northern coast, which has the unique distinction of harboring more threatened endemic species than anywhere else in the world.
• Agricultural expansion has come at the expense of vital habitat over the past several decades. Now, resource exploitation and infrastructure projects planned for the region are further threatening the mountains’ ecosystems, according to scientists and local activists.

Rights recognition crucial to fend off global warming and catastrophic climate change

Indigenous Peoples have had a track record of managing landscapes sustainably for millennia.

However, incursions into their territories, often by settlers involved in natural resource extraction or agriculture, have fractured historic tenure rights, dismantling or putting livelihoods, wildlife and ecosystems at risk.

China’s leadership of global biodiversity talks has seen greater emphasis on tackling environmental crises using natural solutions

Nature-Based Solutions, or NBS, are actions to protect and sustainably manage natural ecosystems, a crucial element in rising to numerous social and environmental challenges, especially the climate crisis.

Tijani Muhammad-Bande was addressing the International Organization for Renewable Energy High-Level meeting on the particular threat faced by Small Island Developing States, or SIDS, and their partners in development. 

“Inaction will put at risk all life on earth as we know it”, warned the veteran Nigerian diplomat. “Inaction will only lead to more severe and extreme weather events, land degradation and deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution and acidification of oceans, global food insecurity as well as drought and floods.” 

Activists concerned Forest Advisory Committee recommendation will lead to privatisation, destruction of forests

The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has recommended that private players be allowed to raise plantations to be later used for compensatory afforestation (CA). This has raised concerns among green activists.

A government campaign to plant more trees has sparked a negative response from the indigenous communities of India.

• Both the climate crisis and inequality require a democratic overhaul. And governments globally should start by turning over legal control of land and natural resources to local communities and indigenous land users. Their rights are key to survival for all of us.

Two weeks after Malagasy Forest Landscape Restoration experts came to Yaoundé, their Cameroonian counterparts visited Madagascar to intensify their South-South exchange on Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa.

The African Union Development Agency (AUDA) pilots targeted exchanges between member countries of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) to foster peer-learning on FLR.

This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum Luxembourg on 30 November.

In Madagascar 70% of the population depends on the traditional exploitation of natural resources, and land degradation affects more than 46% of the country's surface area, with costs to 21% of the Gross Domestic Product.

Under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), which is a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of forests and degraded land in Africa under restoration by 2030, Madagascar has committed to restore 4 million hectares of its forests and degrade lands (Länderlink Madagaskar einfügen, evtl. Homepage MEDD).