Environmental Governance

In many countries, indigenous peoples and forest peoples do not have official ownership of their lands. This can be due to the creation of National Parks, a lack of political will to process land tenure requests, extractive industries encroaching on forest peoples’ lands, and more. Yet these communities have cared for their lands for generations and rely upon them for their foods, medicines, and cultures.

Evidence shows that indigenous peoples – with secure land tenure – are often the best at caring for, conserving, and restoring nature. However, their participation in decision-making and management of these areas is too often severely limited, leaving them vulnerable to rights violations, evictions and land grabbing.

We support indigenous peoples and forest peoples who are facing such challenges to understand and protect their rights, negotiate better recognition of their rights to their territories, and ensure their involvement in, and ideally control over, the management of conservation projects on their lands. Our work is supported by a core grant from Arcadia Fund which underpins work across the programme.

FPP works with indigenous peoples and forest peoples, and with their communities, to:

• Document, strengthen, and transmit their traditional knowledge to future generations and continue to defend and develop sustainable livelihoods where they are threatened. We also create space to advocate for recognition of their customary practices in national and international spheres. We do this through promoting cultural and ecological resilience with partners and advancing recognition of the diversity of cultural and biological knowledge. This includes integrating indigenous and local knowledge into biodiversity monitoring at the community and territorial level, as in the Transformative Pathways partnership.
• Map and monitor cultural and biological diversity, land uses, and traditional knowledge on their lands and waters using new technologies, including GPS satellite tools. This provides valuable data for the community to use for their own territorial monitoring and to present to authorities as evidence of their efforts to protect and conserve the land. Mapping and monitoring work combines culturally appropriate new technologies with patterns of traditional knowledge use. We also support communities and peoples in monitoring human rights outcomes in their communities and lands through a global collaboration, the Indigenous Navigator.
• Advance self-determined conservation initiatives by supporting communities to gain recognition for the conservation they have practiced for decades and collaborate with conservation organisations where possible to advance their land rights struggles. With partners, we act to improve global practice on conservation, including prioritising rights and equity in the creation and management of national parks and other area-based conservation measures. We seek accountability and redress for violations, working with the Legal and Human Rights Programme and the Whakatane Mechanism, and we celebrate and document how communities and peoples are transforming conservation practices.
• Engage in international laws and standards by supporting communities and leaders to attend and actively engage in international processes such as the Biodiversity and Climate Conventions, and global conservation policy spaces like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Indigenous and forest peoples’ voices have long helped shape international policy in creative and ground-breaking ways. This includes partnering with the Responsible Finance Programme in work on global financing for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, advocating for increased direct financing, and engaging with emerging biodiversity and nature markets to ensure critical information provision and analysis is provided to communities.