FPP is Co-Hosting a Side Event on Deforestation, Climate Finance and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at UNFCCC Negotiations in Bonn

Next week Forest Peoples Programme and Tebtebba invite you to the roundtable:

Deforestation, climate finance and the rights of indigenous peoples: the cases of DRC and the Green Climate Fund

DAY: Mon, 08 Jun 2015

TIME: 13:15-14:45

PLACE: Bonn Climate Change Conference June 2015, Room Bonn II (40)

Speakers: Francesco Martone , FPP Senior Policy Advisor; Rene Ngongo, OCEAN; Stanley Kimaren Ole Riamit, ILEPA; Galina Angarova, Tebtebba , Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (videomessage).

Coordination: Grace Balawag, Tebtebba

Participants will share testimonies on the impact of drivers of deforestation on indigenous communities' rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and participate in a discussion on how indigenous peoples can effectively participate to and directly access the Green Climate Fund and Climate Finance for their adaptation and mitigation initiatives.

NOTE: This event occurs while Parties are negotiating the draft text for the Paris Climate Agreement. In this context participants will reiterate the call for urgent and effective commitments by Parties to ensure a rights-based approach to climate actions that will be undertaken before 2020 and under the Paris agreement to be adopted at the upcoming COP21. Likewise the international community will have to effectively target drivers of deforestation (such as expansion of mining, infrastructure, logging, plantations) by ensuring indigenous peoples' rights to land, territories and resources and to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), as well as providing indigenous peoples direct access to finance to support community based adaptation and mitigation actions. The Green Climate Fund will have to ensure that Indigenous peoples are fully and effectively engaged, that safeguards to protect their rights are in place and direct access to funding is envisaged.

Live streaming from the event will be provided courtesy of IISD (www.iisd.org) and the financial support of DFID

For further information please contact:

Francesco Martone (Forest Peoples Programme): francesco@forestpeoples.org / tel ++393384051174

Raymond de Chavez (Tebtebba) raymond@tebtebba.org