About Us
Who we are
Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) is an international NGO that has been working with indigenous peoples and forest peoples since 1990. After more than 30 years, FPP works in 20 countries across South and Central America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, with around 60 partner organisations based in the tropical forest belt.
We work directly and in solidarity with communities and peoples, supporting them to secure their rights to their traditional lands, territories, and resources, protect their forests and ways of life, and choose their own futures.
Around 1.6 billion people live in or proximate to forests, many having deeply embedded cultural relationships and livelihood systems that – along with their forests and the community of life they support – are at the frontier of deforestation threats driven by global demand for agricultural, forestry, energy, and mineral commodities. Much of the world’s remaining biological diversity is located on the customary lands and territories of indigenous peoples and forest peoples, who are also the custodians of nearly 300 billion metric tons of natural carbon (equivalent to 33 times the annual carbon emissions from global energy production). Indigenous peoples and forest peoples are therefore key to sustainably managing, protecting, and restoring the world’s forests and arresting the global climate and biodiversity crises.
Our Approach
Working at local, national, and global levels FPP supports indigenous peoples and forest peoples to effect change from the bottom up – grounded in struggles to advance the enjoyment of their rights and seek remedy for violations.
At the same time, we work to ensure the voices and priorities of indigenous peoples and forest peoples shape national and international law and policy – e.g. relating to business and human rights, climate, and biodiversity – so that resulting regulatory and market reform better serves and respects their rights.
FPP's Role
FPP’s role as a solidarity organisation reflects the statement “if you have come to help me, you can go home again, but if you see my struggle as part of your own survival, then perhaps we can work together”, as expressed by aboriginal activists in the 1970s in Queensland, Australia. This approach is especially pertinent today given the science linking the security of indigenous land rights to better forest health and biodiversity, and the associated benefits for the global climate. FPP’s strategic rudder is the right to self-determination: the right of indigenous peoples and forest peoples to determine their own futures. The now commonly-cited legal principle of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is one manifestation of that self-determination right. FPIC is essential to ensure that the rights to self-determination and to lands, territories, and resources are respected by all actors, and to avoid the potentially devastating impacts that states or corporations can otherwise have when their actions undermine the strong physical and cultural connections that indigenous peoples and many forest peoples have with their forests.
Why 'Forest Peoples'?
The focus on ’forest’ peoples in FPP’s name and strategy has its roots in the movement to combat tropical forest loss during the 1980s. FPP was founded to meet a need for solidarity with and between the diverse peoples who call those forests home, and whose rights and voices have at best been (and still are) overlooked, and at worst subject to centuries of colonial and post-colonial marginalisation and repression. The word ’peoples’ is significant because the right to self-determination is a collective right held by all peoples, alongside rights to their natural wealth and resources, and their means of subsistence. In some contexts, we also work with communities that have a greater dependency on non-forest resources, such as in marine areas.
in the south Rupununi, Guyana. Credit: Tom Griffiths, FPP
Building solidarity as a key strategy
At its establishment, FPP took its lead – and inspiration for its name and strategy – from the Brazilian indigenous leader Aílton Krenak, who created a Forest Peoples Alliance of indigenous peoples, and forest-dependant peoples and communities in the late 1980s, to demand forest protection and secure rights for all forest dwellers.
Over decades we have observed that advancing the rights of indigenous peoples and marginalised forest peoples can be achieved by building solidarity between peoples – as exemplified by the global indigenous movement – and also, especially at the national level, via alliances with wider social movements, including peoples with customary rights who may not self-identify as indigenous.
The more expansive term ’forest peoples’ in FPP’s name was therefore also intended to make space in our strategic approach to include a focus on allied groups and movements coming together and finding strength in solidarity and common cause.