PRESS RELEASE: Indigenous voices key to solving climate and biodiversity crises

Forest Peoples Programme announces five-year work programme with Arcadia

The UN Climate Conference highlighted the growing worldwide consensus of the urgent need for transformational change. Much of humanity’s relationship with a living Earth is broken. As part of the $5 Billion ‘Protecting our Planet Challenge’, Forest Peoples Programme is working to enhance support for indigenous peoples’ land rights and territorial governance in conjunction with Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

This programme of work, which began in October 2021, aims to further develop innovative strategies to scale the impact of, and amplify, indigenous voices in solving the climate and biodiversity crisis by:

• building and disseminating models of mapping and other technical support that can reform inappropriate power relations and turn the tide against expanding industrial agriculture in pristine areas;
• supporting the local development of tools and methodologies to enable communities to demonstrate the positive biodiversity outcomes of community-led conservation;
• fostering collaboration in indigenous-led education and knowledge transmission;
• documenting and championing indigenous knowledge systems that protect biodiverse systems; and
• collaboratively developing rights-based tools and frameworks for use in the conservation sector.

By expanding site-based work in key areas, and collaboratively creating rigorous evidence, tracking, and monitoring, we will contribute to improved recognition and support of indigenous peoples’ rights, and their contributions to global goals of biodiversity conservation, sustainable use of resources, and mitigation of the impact of climatic changes. Communities we support will have increased economic, ecological, and cultural resilience for future generations, building up local strength to conserve and revitalise local systems.

“Supporting indigenous peoples’ continued governance and protection of their territories and lands is crucial in the fight against continued loss of biodiversity and climate changes. We applaud the commitment from Arcadia to investing over the longer-term in this crucial – and significantly under-funded – area of work” said Helen Tugendhat, who coordinates Environmental Governance work in the Forest Peoples Programme.

The Protecting our Planet Challenge stated that “Prioritizing investment in the customary tenure of Indigenous Peoples and their guardianship of territory is a bold shift, yet represents one of the most important and overlooked strategies for addressing the existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss.”

Objectives of the work programme

To realise this, our programme of work will:

• Support territorial management by indigenous and forest peoples or communities demonstrating biodiversity and conservation outcomes in specific sites through monitoring and mapping tools
• Contribute to improving conservation practice in the management of biodiverse landscapes and sharing evidence to support wide-spread recognition and support for indigenous territorial management as a contribution towards the protection of nature
• Co-create a network of committed and engaged organisations sharing knowledge and tools to strengthen the transmission of indigenous and local knowledge systems, particularly associated with biodiversity, sustainable use and ecosystem management
• Secure improved recognition and support of indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems and priorities in global conservation and biodiversity policy and practice

For more information:

Contact:

• Forest Peoples Programme: Helen Tugendhat, Environmental Governance Coordinator, [email protected]
• Arcadia: [email protected]

Forest Peoples Programme works with customary rights holders: communities and peoples who hold, manage and/or own their territories, lands, and resources collectively. Some communities and peoples who own resources under collective custom are not indigenous peoples and do not identify as such but hold similar rights, and terminology used at the local and national levels can vary widely.

Arcadia is a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. It supports charities and scholarly institutions that preserve cultural heritage and the environment. Arcadia also supports projects that promote open access and all of its awards are granted on the condition that any materials produced are made available for free online. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than $910 million to projects around the world.

Read Arcadia’s press release on the ‘Protecting our Planet Challenge’, here.

Related work:

• EVENT: December 8 - How Can We Better Protect and Promote Human Rights in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework? | High-Level Panel
• Indigenous caucus welcomes the Kunming Declaration, but more work to be done
• PRESS RELEASE: Civil society calls on world leaders to put human rights at the centre of environmental policy
• Pass it on! Supporting Indigenous Peoples' Economic, Ecological and Cultural Resilience for Future Generations

Annexe:  Project Background

Many indigenous peoples face threats from industrial expansion and population movements that threaten their very existence and threaten the ecological integrity of their territories. Globally we all face the urgency of the twin biodiversity and climate change crises.

Documenting, supporting and evidencing the positive contributions of indigenous and forest peoples[1] in addressing these crises from the ground up provides a platform to promote alternatives at the global level. This can influence national and global policy and financing choices, including through the CBD and UNFCCC processes, and by national government. It can also directly influence conservation practice. Genuine policy alternatives and practical solutions that espouse a mosaic view of the world with locally grounded, sustainable systems are sorely needed, and partnership with indigenous and forest peoples can provide these alternatives.

At community level, many communities are responding to threats against their ways of life by developing their own initiatives that incorporate the transmission and use of traditional knowledge, and engage youth and children, on their own terms. But such initiatives are often small-scale and remain largely invisible to donors, policy makers, conservation professionals and the public and lack sustained support. At the community level resilience is also being eroded by the scale and pace of change and localized support and networking between indigenous and forest peoples is needed to retain and reinforce resilience and support alternative visions.

As inhabitants of our bounded planet, we need to ensure the relationship between humans and nature is brought into better balance. Our long partnerships with indigenous and forest dependent peoples across the globe have taught us that some of the solutions lie within their systems of knowledge and management and working with them to develop and share these can have global impact.

Our Open Access approach

Forest Peoples Programme publishes all materials under Creative Commons licenses and never behind paywalls. Under this project we will publish a range of materials, from journal articles, to research papers, to social media outreach and news articles. Production of multimedia communication tools such as short videos and podcasts is being explored. All materials will be produced in at least two languages, usually more, prioritising end-use readers and owners of the knowledge and stories being shared.