Download our 2020 Annual Report

Times remain uncertain for forest peoples

With the turmoil and uncertainty of the global pandemic, life has changed for everyone, not least for indigenous peoples and local communities.

During 2020, working closely with our local partners and global allies, we have seen how governments have used the pandemic as a cover to roll back existing human rights and environmental protections. These include the deregulation of damaging industries, the lowering of protections for human rights and the removal of environmental regulations. This has allowed for the expansion of harmful business practices, repression of the rights of forest peoples, and increased deforestation. 

Throughout the pandemic, forest peoples have demonstrated huge resilience. We have documented examples from across Africa, Asia and Latin America of how communities have been affected by COVID-19 and how they have responded with creativity and determination – from increased patrolling of their territories to strengthening their food sovereignty. Yet it remains clear that without security of tenure and self-determination, including full participation in decision-making processes, events such as this pandemic will continue to have disproportionate impacts on indigenous peoples and other marginalised forest peoples and their communities.

Looking Back

Despite the pandemic, the work of partners and FPP has continued at every level. This ranged from pressuring a sovereign wealth fund to cut ties with a company linked to indigenous land rights violations, to repealing an ordinance that threatened 3.5 million hectares of indigenous land in the Amazon.

We continued to advocate for and support territorial management by forest peoples, including community-led conservation, across the globe. We are working with our partners in Belize to secure land titles for 41 Mayan communities. Together with local partner organisations in Indonesia, we challenged regressive laws and highlighted the devastating effects that government plans could have across large parts of Borneo.

In September, we launched Local Biodiversity Outlooks 2 – a major report produced with the indigenous caucus that represents indigenous peoples from seven continents and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It demonstrates the massive contributions that indigenous peoples and local communities already make to biodiversity and their centrality to protecting nature.

We have also supported the Zero Tolerance Initiative, a rightsholder-led initiative challenging killings and violence in global supply chains, through engaging with investors and major global brands.

Through our Legal and Human Rights Programme, including our Strategic Legal Response Centre, we have continued using legal routes to fight for land and human rights and given legal support to forest peoples, including communities in Kenya forcefully evicted during the pandemic.

Looking forward

This will be my last Director’s message as I am stepping down from the Director role in 2021 for pastures new. However, I am glad that we will go into 2021 in a reasonable financial position, with a strong leadership team, better systems, more effective internal coordination, and deeper external collaborations. In the current context, FPP’s work is more important than ever. FPP will be working with our partners and allies to continue responding to the urgent needs that communities are facing on the ground, as well as pushing for systemic change at the global level.

James Whitehead

Director, Forest Peoples Programme

Download our 2020 Annual Report