COP27 - leaders travel to Egypt to demand their rights are protected and to present their proposals for change

The UNFCCC Climate Conference (COP27) begins on November 6 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. COP27 comes at a critical point in the fight against climate change, and many Indigenous Peoples and Local Community representatives will be attending.

Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) is directly supporting a delegation of eight Indigenous leaders and representatives, and members of the team will be in Sharm El-Sheikh to support Indigenous and Local Community partners from our global network. Our partners are travelling to Egypt to represent their nations, peoples and communities, share their experiences and renew their demands for recognition and support to protect their territories and rights. FPP is also working to ensure more partners can provide inputs and engage in COP27 remotely.

The Indigenous leaders and representatives will take part in various panels and events*, as well as screening video messages from their communities. Their aim is not just to highlight the ever-increasing threats that are putting the future of their communities at risk, but also to share and advance indigenous-developed strategies, processes and proposals that allow them to effectively protect and govern their traditional lands and sustain their vital contributions to global climate and biodiversity protection.

*We’ll be posting live updates and event announcements on our website, and Twitter and Facebook feeds, and all leaders are available for interview throughout COP27. 

Partners at COP27 (Confirmed participants)

FPP will be supporting the attendance of the following indigenous peoples’ leaders and representatives at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from 6th to 18th November 2022.

For further information or contact details of these delegates, please refer to Oda Almås:

• [email protected], +1 718 208 6326.
• View downloadable pdf version here

Representatives of the Wapichan people (Guyana)  

Immaculata Casimero (Mackie) 

Communications Officer for the South Rupununi District Council – an organisation that represents 21 Wapichan villages in Guyana - where she is working to promote women’s rights, the land rights of her people and defence of the Wapichan tropical forest territory. She is also currently the chairperson of the Aishara Toon Village Women's Association.  

Alma O’Connell

Long-standing advocate for the preservation, protection and revival of Wapichan language, culture, traditional craft-making and livelihoods. Alma is also active in local alternative livelihood programmes, including as Chairperson of Maruranau Women's Proactive Cooperative Society – a platform for incubation of small sustainable business ideas.

Timothy Williams

Project coordinator with the South Rupununi District Council where he manages community initiatives for the protection of wildlife and headwaters. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Geography and as a young Wapichan person is passionate about indigenous peoples’ rights and protection of the environment.

Core messages and proposals for action  

Mackie, Alma and Timothy will share the Wapichan people’s experience of continued pressure from extractive industries on their territory and reaffirm their call to the international community for recognition of their territory spanning 2.3 million ha, of which 1.6 million ha is community conserved forest. They will highlight their ongoing efforts to protect the headwaters of river systems that are key to a unique hydrological connection between the Guiana Shield and the Amazon basin, which are home to two of the most biodiverse, carbon rich and intact forests in the world. The Wapichan were awarded the Equator Prize in 2015 in Paris for their efforts to map, monitor and sustainably manage their traditional territory.

Representatives of the Shipibo-Konibo people (Peru)

Robert Guimaraes Vasquez/Pekon Sani

Leader of the Shipibo-Konibo people. He is a coordinator of projects and international climate cooperation for the community of Flor de Ucayali and a senior councillor of the Federation of Native Communities of Ucayali and Affluents – FECONAU - , an indigenous federation in the Ucayali region of Peru. He is considered and declared by his people as a cultural ambassador and defender of the human rights of indigenous peoples and the environment.

Virginia Ulrika Cauper Lomas

Young leader of the Shipibo-Konibo people. She is responsible for the thematic work stream "Our communal forests for today and always" of the Indigenous Women's Programme of the Regional Organisation AIDESEP Ucayali – ORAU -, an organisation representing 14 indigenous peoples in the Ucayali region of Peru. She is a member of the Amazon Youth Network. She is an environmental engineer by profession with experience in community forestry and climate change.

Core messages and proposals for action  

Robert and Virginia will be highlighting how human rights and environmental defenders are threatened by drug trafficking, illegal logging and monoculture agribusiness developments, and how the government’s laws are not providing adequate protections for indigenous peoples’ rights in the light of this external pressure. Robert will also talk about human rights violations in EU supply chains linked to palm oil cultivation in the Peruvian Amazon. Virginia will focus on the integral role of women in local economies and indigenous knowledge transmission, and on the threat to indigenous cultures as women and children are forced to migrate to cities due to drug trafficking making their homelands too dangerous to live in.

Representatives of the Kichwa people (Peru)

Marisol García Apagueño  

Kichwa leader of the Tupac Amaru indigenous community and currently secretary of the Federation of Kichwa Indigenous Peoples of Chazuta Amazonas (FEPIKECHA). She has served on the board of the Coordinating Committee for the Development and Defence of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM), a  regional indigenous federation that is part of AIDESEP.  She is one of the founders and promoters of the Kichwa Women's Meetings in San Martín.

Core messages and proposals for action 

"Indigenous peoples cannot continue cleaning up the waste created by the big cities".

Marisol will share threats that Kichwa communities face due to the lack of secure land tenure over their communal territories, including the expansion of illegal logging and narcotics production, forestry concessions and road construction, and community responses ranging from territorial patrols to reforestation efforts. She will also present the Kichwa people's legal actions and demands to challenge dispossession by state-managed conservation areas linked to high-profile carbon offset projects, as well as the Peruvian government's continued lack of recognition and titling of their ancestral territories. Marisol will also share the challenges Kichwa women leaders face in their efforts to achieve gender equity and access to justice, education and health provision, even as they experience increasing climate impacts.

Representative of the Mende and Limba peoples (Sierra Leone):

John Paul Bai

John Paul Bai is of the Mende and Limba peoples in Sierra Leone. He is the Director of the Sierra Leone Land Alliance and a chief principal campaigner of an advocacy network of civil society organisations and individuals campaigning for land law, policy and institutional reform.

John Paul has helped spearhead land reform efforts resulting in the creation of Sierra Leone’s first Customary Land Rights Act 2022 and the National Land Commission Act 2022. Among other things these two laws will:

• Grant all local communities the right to Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) over all industrial projects on their lands;
• Ban industrial development, including mining, timber and agribusiness, in old-growth forests and other ecologically sensitive areas;
• Incorporate public environmental license conditions into binding legal agreements between communities and companies; and
• Establish local land use committees to make decisions about how community lands are managed, and mandate that those committees are at least 30% women.

As a graduate from Fourah Bay College University of Sierra Leone with a Master’s in development studies, John Paul has worked closely with forest communities facing land and conflicts and threats from logging in the Koinadugu district and with other communities looking to halt and reverse forest loss.

Core messages and proposals for action  

At COP27, John Paul will be hosting an event to introduce a policy brief calling on the Government of Sierra Leone to involve civil society organisations and especially environmental land rights defenders to help in the monitoring and bring to bear its commitment to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Representative of the Aro indigenous people (Nigeria)

Chukwunwike Chijioke Okereke (Chinwike)

Chinwike is a Human Rights and Development Law Expert from Ujari community of the Aro indigenous people of Ibo tribe in the south east region of Nigeria, and founder & CEO of the African Law Foundation (AFRILAW), a non-profit and non-governmental organisation of lawyers looking to eradicate poverty, ensure human rights and justice, and environmental protection, such as community land rights protection, and sustainability. Working towards securing tenure rights of women and men in line with international law and standards on human rights, AFRILAW also work towards ensuring equitable land redistribution supporting redistributive agrarian reforms supporting secure and equitable use of land away from large-scale, aggressive farming systems such as palm oil cultivation which has seen reports of land-grabbing and violations towards host communities. 

He is a member of the Gender Justice Expert Network of the International Land Coalition (ILC) and the Men United for Gender Justice in Nigeria Initiative as well as focal point for West Africa Drug Policy Network. Chinwike’s work also covers wider topics working to create change, transform lives, and build a prosperous, peaceful and developed society.  

Core messages and proposals for action

Chinwike will be emphasising the need for protecting human rights in all climate action by sharing experiences from Nigeria and how climate change impacts and mitigation projects led to the violation of the rights of vulnerable peoples and communities.

Events

Managing diverse landscapes collectively for the future: Wapichan Wiizi, Guyana

• Wednesday, November 9, 17:00 - 17:45 (Indigenous Pavillion)
• Timothy Williams, South Rupununi District Council (SRDC); Immaculata Casimero, SRDC and Aishara Toon Village Women's Association; Alma O’Connell, SRDC

As representatives of the South Rupununi District Council we will share the Wapichan people’s vision for territorial protection and highlight how our collective territorial management - including headwater protection and a dedicated 1.6 million ha community conserved forest - constitute a key contribution to global climate mitigation efforts. Aside from its significant cultural and spiritual value, our territory serves as an important ecological bridge between the forests of the Guiana Shield and the Amazon basin – two of the most biodiverse, carbon rich and intact forests in the world. 

Why direct and local climate financing for indigenous Peoples and local communities is urgent now 

• November 14, 11:30-13:00 EET (Egypt), Room 7 (150)

Only 3% of climate finance flows to IPLCs. To halt land degradation, reverse forest loss by 2030, direct and local climate funding must be delivered and it must reach grassroots actors who are on the front line of implementing NBS for climate change, protecting cultures and biodiversity.

Links to access this event online will be added here when available