Download our 2022 Annual Report

Download our Financial Statements 2022

2022 saw the global pandemic receding, the appointment of Sônia Guajajara as Brazil’s first ever Minister of Indigenous Affairs, and the conclusion of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, the world was also rocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the response to the climate crisis continues to fall short, with forests tipping towards becoming net carbon emitters.

For indigenous and forest peoples, it is all too often a case of plus ça change: the commodities concerned may seem different – in the form of carbon and other biocredits, and transition minerals – but the extractive models by which many of those commodities are derived remain all too familiar, as communities from Peru to Liberia and Indonesia can attest. Meanwhile conventional threats to forest peoples’ rights continue, including from agribusiness, logging, oil and gas, and fortress conservation.

There have also been moments of hope and success. In Indonesia, after much lobbying by FPP, our partners and allies, the Asia Development Bank postponed the funding of a new road through the heart of Borneo, which threatened large-scale expropriation of indigenous peoples’ lands, oil palm expansion and associated deforestation.

Agreement on the Global Biodiversity Framework was the culmination of a colossal effort by many actors, including indigenous peoples’ advocates, who secured a significant victory in the clear recognition of the rights and contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities to combatting biodiversity loss. Relatedly in 2022, FPP and a coalition of indigenous organisations launched an ambitious six-year project to showcase the difference local indigenous and community initiatives make to global biodiversity.

Meanwhile, our Strategic Legal Response Centre (SLRC) provided key support for landmark cases, rapid response, legal capacity building, and networking. In one such case supported by FPP lawyers and the Katiba Institute, the Ogiek of Mount Elgon in Kenya celebrated a court ruling which found the conversion of Ogiek ancestral land into a state game reserve to have been unlawful, with the land – over 17,000 hectares – thereby reverting to community collective ownership and protection.

There continues to be a healthy discourse challenging the small proportion of donor funding directly reaching grassroots struggles. As a solidarity organisation with decades of experience supporting partners to access funding directly, alongside legal and technical accompaniment, FPP’s model has a lot to offer. We count as a mark of success when roles are reversed and partners become direct grantees, and a test of our added-value when they still choose us as partners.

Building on that model, in 2022 we continued to grow FPP’s ‘Forest Visions Partnership’, now supporting communities in Kenya, Peru, Colombia, Cameroon, Suriname and Liberia. This initiative supports communities to develop and implement self-determined visions for their forest lands and territories, via multi-year flexible funding, alongside a commitment to provide capacity support. The Partnership sits among several initiatives which FPP is now leading or collaborating on, including the SLRC, the Zero Tolerance Initiative, the Indigenous-led Education Network, and our gender programme’s small grants mechanism.

Our work balances radicalism and pragmatism on the paths we tread with partners. We strive not just to disrupt power imbalances, but to upend them; not just to tweak systems, but to transform them. On that journey respecting the right to self-determination remains the best navigational tool we have in our collective saddle bag.

¡Venceremos!

Tom Lomax,

Director, Forest Peoples Programme

Request a printed copy via mail: info@forestpeoples.org

Download our 2022 Annual Report

Download our Financial Statements 2022