Indigenous forest communities such as this provide numerous benefits for sustainability. Photo courtesy Ford Foundation
Report says recognizing indigenous community forest rights helps slow global warming
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor MAYANGNA SAUNI AS INDIGENOUS TERRITORY — Charlie Taylor died defending the forests of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve of Nicaragua on April 13, 2013. He was shot by intruders when he and his neighbors questioned them about tree-cutting on his community’s ancestral lands. This July 24, his story became international news, as organizations dedicated to promoting indigenous community forestry released a report documenting its proven effectiveness at curbing global warming. Taylor, and others like him, may not have died in vain if governments will act on the report and assure that indigenous communities’ land-tenure rights are respected, according to David Kaimowitz, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development director for the Ford Foundation. “Deforestation is a major cause of global warming, and so we all have a stake in helping these communities defend their resources from wealthy ranchers, loggers, miners, farmers and drug traffickers,” Kaimowitz wrote in a Ford Foundation blog post announcing the report. Co-sponsored by the Rights and Resources Initiative and the World Resources Institute (WRI), the scientific study is called “Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change”. It recommends governments:
• Recognize and protect indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ legal rights to their forests,WRI’s Land and Resource Rights Project Coordinator Danielle King says governments can meet their climate change mitigation targets by protecting community forest rights. The report’s lead author Caleb Stevens explains that community forests are lands held collectively by either rural or indigenous communities based on a shared history, language, culture, or lineage. In contrast to individual private property, most community forest lands are governed by customary rights, rules, and institutions that pre-date most modern governments, and continue to adapt to changing circumstances. While customary forest rights, rules, and institutions vary, many community members have inheritable rights to part of the community’s forest land to support their families. The remaining forest is held as common property of the community—called “forest commons”—with community rules governing access and use, he notes. Hundreds of millions of people across Africa, Asia, and the Americas use and depend on vast forest areas for their livelihoods and culture, he said in an interview with King. However, he stated, “Many countries’ laws do not legally recognize communities’ customary rights to their forest. This leaves forest communities especially vulnerable to losing their forest land to companies, developers, and other interests.” Deforestation and other land changes produce about 11 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to his report, co-authored with Robert Winterbottom, Sarah Parsons, and Carni Klirs. Governments around the world legally recognize at least 513 million hectares of community forests, land held collectively by either rural populations or indigenous peoples, it says. This area stores about 37 billion tons of carbon—29 times the annual carbon footprint of all the passenger vehicles in the world. “By working with communities to strengthen their forest rights, rather than undermining them, governments can ensure numerous sustainable development benefits,” Stevens says. “Strong community forest rights help communities protect their forests, reducing CO₂ emissions from deforestation and improving forest health. Strong forest rights also provide communities with secure access to forest products for housing, medicine, and other local uses as well as income from the sale of timber and non-timber forest products,” he adds. In the Bolivian Amazon, the legally recognized community forests have a deforestation rate six times lower than in the rest of the country. In the Brazilian Amazon, community forests have a deforestation rate 11 times lower than the rest of the country. The rate is 20 times lower than in the rest of the country, when it comes to the Guatemalan district of Petén, according to the report. Much of the attention to climate change focuses on energy and fossil fuels, Kaimowitz noted. “But any realistic strategy to curb climate change must also address deforestation,” he said. The world’s forests store more carbon than the atmosphere. “One recent estimate suggests that by stopping deforestation and reforesting we could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent,” he added. (Contact Talli Nauman NSN Health and Environment Editor at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
• Support the communities with technical assistance and training,
• Engage with them in decision-making on investments affecting their forests, and
• Compensate them for the climate and other benefits provided by their forests.
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