Climate and forest policy and finance

Through this work stream, FPP supports indigenous peoples and forest peoples to be recognised as rights-holders, knowledge-holders and agents of positive change in national and international climate and forest policy. We do this through assisting rights-holders to analyse impacts of current policies on their rights; filing complaints to relevant non-judicial bodies and accessing national courts; engaging with regional and international human rights bodies and mandates; and through presenting their own proposals for protection of life in their territories in national and international climate fora.

Context

The impacts of global climate change are disproportionately felt by indigenous peoples and traditional communities whose lives, livelihoods and cultures depend directly on their customary lands, territories and resources. Elevated temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns with increased rainfall as well as longer and more frequent droughts damage their food production, limit their access to clean water and traditional medicine and pose a variety of health risks.

While constituting only 5 per cent of the global population, indigenous peoples manage around 25 per cent of the world’s land, which contains much of the planet’s biodiversity and the carbon stored in soil and biomass¹. Indigenous peoples have long demanded that national and international climate and biodiversity policies, funding, and initiatives acknowledge their positive climate and biodiversity contributions and respect and protect their rights, cultures, and knowledge. Despite a growing recognition of their key role in climate, biodiversity and forest protection, international climate and biodiversity policies and initiatives developed and implemented to date have often marginalised them and failed to uphold their rights. Coupled with the reality that many tropical forest countries’ laws fail to adequately protect their rights, this continues to leave indigenous peoples’ and their lands vulnerable to new projects, programmes and initiatives quickly gaining ground as ‘climate solutions’.

Over many years, FPP has worked with indigenous peoples and forest peoples to demand protections for their rights in national and international programmes for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) as well as in the bilateral and multilateral financing mechanisms set up to prepare for and implement REDD+ actions. With the growing focus on also bringing private sector finance into REDD+ and other ‘nature-based solutions’ through markets that sell carbon, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services credits, the need for strong human rights safeguards to hold both private and public project developers and buyers to account is paramount. Without strong protections for indigenous peoples’ and forest peoples’ rights, these markets pose significant risks of driving up land expropriation and land and forest enclosures in the name of green climate projects and offsets. Many indigenous peoples and forest peoples are already reporting lack of effective consultation and FPIC processes, in some cases leading to dispossession and eviction from their ancestral lands, in the development of carbon credit projects and programmes.

Aims

Our work champions the integration of human rights protection and climate change action. This is not only key from a climate justice perspective; to be effective and sustainable, climate solutions must be based in the international human rights law framework and designed in close collaboration with peoples and communities who hold deep knowledge about their natural environment and stand to be negatively affected by flawed solutions. Therefore, we support indigenous peoples and forest peoples to advance their own strategies, processes and proposals that allow them to protect, use and govern their territories and traditional lands according to their customs and to sustain their vital contributions to global climate and biodiversity protection.

Our Work

Our work supporting indigenous peoples and forest peoples to be recognised as rights-holders, knowledge-holders and agents of positive change in national and international climate and forest policy includes:

• carrying out research on national and international climate and forest policies and finance and developing analyses on the extent to which they align with international human rights law;
• developing culturally appropriate materials for peoples and communities we work with on potential threats and opportunities of national and international climate and forest policies (e.g NDC, national ‘green development’ plans, and policies and decision under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change);
• supporting our partners to respond to negative impacts of such policies, e.g. through requests for information, filing complaints to relevant bodies, accessing national courts, and engaging with regional and international human rights bodies and mandates;
• supporting partners to develop and share their own proposals for protection of life in their territories in national and international fora and to seek resources (e.g. financial) to implement those proposals;
• enabling encounters of indigenous peoples and forest peoples within and between countries where they can share experiences of exclusionary climate initiatives as well as strategies they employ to counter those.