May 31, 2023
Brazil’s lower house of Congress approved legislation on Tuesday that will have major negative implications for the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples. The legislation allows the government to seize land from Indigenous communities if it deems their cultural traits have changed. It also places an unreasonable time limit and cut off date on claims that will undermine large areas of Indigenous territorial claims.
June 20, 2022
The Campaign for Nature condemns the horrific reports of Tanzanian security forces violently evicting peoples from their ancestral lands and territories in the Ngorongoro District. The reported shootings, arrests of community leaders, and hundreds of people being forcibly driven from their homes is abhorrent.
We call for the immediate cessation of the violence, intimidation and evictions; for the perpetrators of violence to be held accountable; and for the rights of the Maasai to their lands and to their internationally recognized Indigenous rights to be respected.
December 8, 2021
Deep in the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest area containing isolated and uncontacted tribes is under increasing threat from illegal logging and gold mining, advancing coca plantations and drug trafficking violence, a new report warns.
An undetermined number of indigenous people that could number several thousand inhabit a vast swathe of forest twice the size of Ireland that overlaps the Brazil-Peru border.
Their longhouses in jungle clearings have been spotted from planes but encounters with outsiders or clashes with invaders are anecdotal.
In the most comprehensive study to date of the so-called Javari-Tapiche corridor, to be published on Thursday in Lima, a Peruvian indigenous organization says the world's largest number of uncontacted people are in danger.
December 7, 2021
An Indonesian court has delivered a landmark victory for Indigenous rights in a case that pitted West Papuan activists against several palm oil companies.
The Jayapura Administrative Court in West Papua Province on Tuesday ruled in favour of a district head who had revoked permits allowing more than a dozen palm oil companies to operate in Indigenous forest areas and turn them into plantations.
Johny Kamuru, head of Sorong Regency, cancelled the permits after Indigenous groups said they had not consented to the conversion of their ancestral lands into palm oil concessions and a review by the provincial government recommended they be revoked in February 2021.
Three of the companies affected took legal action against Kamaru, including PT Papua Lestari Abadi and PT Sorong Agro Sawitindo, whose bid to have their permits reinstated was rejected by the court.
November 1, 2021
At least $1.7bn of funding will be given directly to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in recognition of their key role in protecting the planet’s lands and forests, it will be announced at Cop26 today.
The governments of the UK, US, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands are leading the $1.7bn (£1.25bn) funding pledge, which is being announced as part of ambitious global efforts to reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, with campaigners cautiously hopeful that this conference of the parties (Cop) could be the first to properly champion indigenous peoples’ rights.
Tuntiak Katan, a leader of Ecuador’s indigenous Shuar people who serves as general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, said: “We are happy with the financing announcement, but we will be watching for concrete measures that will reveal whether the intent is to transform a system that has directed less than 1% of climate funding to indigenous and local communities. What matters is what happens next.
May 21, 2021
An international study led by the ICTA-UAB states that recognizing indigenous peoples' and local communities' rights and agency is critical to addressing the current biodiversity crisis
Policies established by the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) could be ineffective if the rights and agency of indigenous peoples and local communities are not recognized and fully incorporated into biodiversity management. This is supported by an international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and recently published in the journal Ambio.
May 18, 2021
For the first time in history, with the appointment of Deb Haaland as the Secretary of the Interior, the protection of natural lands in the United States falls under the leadership of an Indigenous woman native to the lands she is called to defend. While this momentous selection had been supported by diverse groups from across the country, it begged the question: What took so long for Americans to recognize the importance of Native perspectives in protecting the land?
Indigenous people make up less than 5 percent of our world’s population, yet they serve as the frontline defenders of the Earth’s biodiversity. These communities manage and/or sit on roughly 80 percent of the ecosystems necessary to maintain and protect balance on our planet. Despite colonization, discrimination, and displacement, Indigenous people around the world have remained deeply tied to their native lands. They are the first to notice and experience the ecology chaos that occurs when forests are cleared, pipelines are installed, or waterways are contaminated, and they’ve served steady warnings of what will happen if we do not protect Earth’s natural resources.
May 4, 2021
A week since the Climate Leaders Summit, where Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to work with Indigenous peoples to protect the Amazon, his government is being accused of acting to intimidate them.
At least two prominent Indigenous leaders in the country have recently been summoned for police questioning for criticizing the government, raising concerns from human rights organizations, politicians, celebrities and academics about Bolsonaro’s abuse of power and the undermining of freedom of expression.
Sônia Guajajara, one of the top Brazilian Indigenous activists and head of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) — the country’s main Indigenous association — was called on April 26 to appear before the federal police to testify in a probe for allegedly “slandering” Bolsonaro’s government.
“The persecution by this government is unacceptable and absurd. They will not silence us,” Guajajara said on an April 30 Twitter post.
March 1, 2021
The government of Brazil is considering a bill that would open Indigenous territories to gold mining and mining by the oil and gas industries. This would threaten both the Amazon rainforest and the people that live there.
Over 6,000 Kayapó from 56 communities recently voiced their opposition to the bill: “We do not agree with individual statements made by Kayapó relatives in favor of gold mining,” their declaration reads. Although some leaders have succumbed to pressure to support the bill, the Kayapó people as a whole stand firmly against it.
December 7, 2020
December 3, 2020 was a fateful day for the defense of the environment in Colombia. Javier Francisco Parra Cubillos, an official from regional environmental authority Cormacarena in the department of Meta – was shot several times while traveling through the municipality of La Macarena, in the department’s southern region.
According to information from Cormacarena (La Macarena Regional Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the La Macarena Special Management Area) a couple on a motorcycle ambushed him and left him for dead before fleeing. Gravely injured but still alive, Parra was taken to the municipal hospital. He was going to be transferred in a Colombian Air Force helicopter to Villavicencio, in the capital of Meta, to receive continued specialized care.
However, he died from his before he could be transferred.
July 29, 2020
2019 was the deadliest year on record for environmental activists, according to a new report by the advocacy watchdog Global Witness. In total, the group says that at least 212 people were killed across the world in retaliation for their defense of land and the environment, with those representing Indigenous communities bearing a disproportionate brunt of the violence.
July 22, 2020
When it comes to biodiversity, South Africa offers some cautionary tales. The country is the world’s third most biodiverse – containing, fully or partially, three of the earth’s 36 biodiversity hotspots – yet it has lost more than 18% of its natural habit and nearly half its terrestrial ecosystems are threatened.
However, South Africa also offers some invaluable lessons in how biodiversity can be protected. For that tale, we should look to the Gumbi, a small clan of Zulu-speaking people in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Their story underscores the wisdom of conserving large areas of biodiversity and, in the words of the Gumbi leadership, finding ways to “share life with nature”. Here’s what they did.
July 15, 2020
Indigenous Peoples and their unique knowledge are essential to address the COVID-19 outbreak and to build a more sustainable, resilient world as we recover from the pandemic, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said today.
“The COVID-19 pandemic shows us that we need to rethink the way we interact with nature, as well as how we produce and consume food.
The continuous use of unsustainable agricultural practices, and the devastation of forests and wildlife, are part of what has brought us into closer contact with the virus that causes COVID-19,” said IFAD President, Gilbert F. Houngbo.
July 11, 2020
As various levels of government become more serious about climate change, there has been heightened interest in incorporating Indigenous knowledge in that effort.
Last year, the federal government passed new environmental assessment legislation, the Impact Assessment Act, which requires Indigenous knowledge to be used alongside scientific information in any decisions about the environment, including natural resource projects.
March 24, 2020
COVID-19 and other health endemics are directly connected to climate change and deforestation, according to Indigenous leaders from around the world who gathered on March 13, in New York City, for a panel on Indigenous rights, deforestation and related health endemics.
“The coronavirus is telling the world what Indigenous Peoples have been saying for thousands of years — if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, we will face this and even worse threats,” said Levi Sucre Romero, a BriBri Indigenous person from Costa Rica and co-coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB).
