Daily Star Kenya

13 October 2023

Campaign for Nature has urged stakeholders to include both climate and nature solutions for the most affected individuals in local communities.  In an interview with the Star, the director Brian O’Donnell said it was time for indigenous people to have their rights upheld. "Climate and nature solutions should be inclusive and equitable. Not forgetting the financial bit, which should get to the people really affected by climate change," O’Donnell said.

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Media Statement

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.

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The Globe and Mail

September 20, 2022
Indigenous-managed conservation areas are key to Canada’s pledge to designate nearly one third of its land and ocean waters for biodiversity protection by the end of this decade, according to a new report.

The report from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada stresses that protected areas should be “co-developed and implemented with Indigenous consent” as part of Canada’s reconciliation process.

Its release on Tuesday coincides with efforts by a group of world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to press their counterparts on biodiversity preservation ahead of international negotiations in Montreal later this year.

Mr. Trudeau is set to speak at an event on Tuesday evening occurring on the margins of the UN General Assembly, now under way in New York. The event was co-organized by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, a group of more than 100 countries that have all formally endorsed the target of protecting at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

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UNDP

August 4, 2022
Reiyia is among leaders fighting for the rights of Indigenous communities and calling for stronger action, as up to 80 percent of the negotiating text in the 20 action targets of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework draft agreement have remained unresolved, threatening progress at the up-coming COP15 conference. While almost 100 countries support the proposal to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030 under the framework, with the protection of Indigenous rights a critical element of this initiative, countries failed to agree on fundamental issues.

These prominent issues include how much funding would be committed to conserve biodiversity; or what percentage figures the world should strive to protect, conserve and restore to address the extinction crisis. Experts have called for the recognition of the land, territories and traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). Additionally, Indigenous advocates and allies are pushing to secure the free, prior and informed consent of IPLCs in conservation policies as key for the framework to succeed.

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Reuters

May 17, 2022
We need tree-planting, we need renewables, and we need fossil-free fuels. But in our efforts to tackle the climate emergency, are we forgetting the soil beneath our feet?

Many organisations are warning that the overlapping crises of climate, biodiversity and land degradation must be tackled together – not sequentially – if planet Earth is to continue to support us.

The Global Land Outlook report published last month by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), describes land as the “operative link between biodiversity loss and climate change”.

Underlining that, parties to the Convention meeting in Cote d’Ivoire from May 9-20 for the first of the year’s three big UN summits, heard French President Emmanuel Macron in a video message call for all public policies to incorporate the three interlinked conventions on biodiversity, climate change, and desertification, that grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

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IUCN

March 14, 2022
The new UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report1 synthesizes the latest science on the impacts on and vulnerability of natural and socio-economic systems to climate change, and challenges and options for adaptation.

A key message from the IPCC report is that “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” All approaches are needed, including “safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystems” and protecting “approximately 30% to 50% of the Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean areas, including near-natural ecosystems.”

Human-induced climate change and extreme weather events have substantially damaged ecosystems, and led to increases in the risk of extinction of more than 10,000 species, including the extinct Bramble Cay melomys. Such events simultaneously result in serious implications for human well-being by impacting on food and water security , and higher incidence of associated diseases.

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Reuters

January 11, 2021
A global fund launched on Tuesday aims to boost climate financing to indigenous communities to help them secure land rights and preserve forested areas from the Congo Basin to the Andes, the initiative's backers said.

Governments, philanthropists and companies are expected to contribute to the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative (CLARIFI), which will distribute funding among groups working to conserve forests and other ecosystems on the ground.

Over the last decade, less than 1% of international climate finance has gone to indigenous and local communities to manage forests that absorb planet-heating carbon emissions and are rich in biodiversity, but the new fund hopes to change that.

"For too long indigenous peoples and local communities have received shockingly little climate funding," said Stanley Kimaren ole Riamit, founder-director of Kenyan group Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners and a CLARIFI steering committee member. The fund will act as the "missing link" between donors that want to curb climate change and conserve biodiversity, and forest groups with the skills to do that, said Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an NGO which is leading CLARIFI with the Campaign for Nature group.

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Campaign for Nature

January 11, 2022
As the role played by Indigenous Peoples and local communities in safeguarding the planet gains long-due recognition by global climate and conservation initiatives, their representatives and allies have launched a new mechanism to finance locally-led efforts with full respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

The Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative (CLARIFI), led by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and Campaign for Nature (C4N), will mobilize and strategically deploy public and private funds to scale up the legal recognition of Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, and local communities’ rights, as well as their efforts to strengthen their conservation of natural resources, traditional livelihoods, and gender justice.

About 1.8 billion Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities claim, inhabit and steward the earth’s most critical ecosystems, including its forests. Securing their rights and following their guidance is a powerful bottom-up opportunity to address the catastrophic threats facing the planet. For example, RRI estimates that 33% of the Earth’s tropical forest carbon is at risk without recognizing community rights to their lands. Securing these rights will avoid 1.1 to 7.4 GtC02e of emissions.

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Global Citizen

December 2, 2021
Conservation is about protecting that which sustains life on Earth — the rivers that flow with fresh water, the soil rooting crops in place, the forests and marinescapes that release oxygen.

Framed in this way, conservation seems like an undertaking that would be universally supported. 

But conservationists face countless challenges, from the industrial forces invested in exploiting natural resources and polluting ecosystems to a general lack of funding and government support. Efforts to conserve an environment have long been framed by opponents as a threat to jobs and community well-being — as if any jobs or well-being would exist without a functioning environment.

This opposition appears to be fading as the climate and biodiversity crisis brings increasing devastation. Organizations are receiving waves of funding, and the voices of Indigenous people, who have long advocated for reciprocity with nature, are being elevated. The United Nations has deemed now until 2030 to be part of the Decade on Restoration, a globally coordinated effort to heal the planet. An increasing number of countries have pledged to protect 30% of land and marine spaces by 2030, and some corporations are beginning to transform their supply chains and operations.

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Mirage

November 23, 2021
At the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow in November, direct and unprecedented engagement between indigenous peoples, local communities and governments helped unlock sustainable and resilient ways to achieve the Paris Agreement commitments and reverse biodiversity decline. For the first time in the history of the UNFCCC, twenty-eight indigenous peoples were nominated from each of the seven UN indigenous socio-cultural regions, to engage directly as knowledge holders and share experiences as indigenous experts with governments.

Indigenous peoples and local communities have knowledge and values oriented towards nature and amassed through generations. Indigenous peoples steward over 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.

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UNDP

November 11, 2021
Protected areas (PAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) are a cornerstone of biodiversity conservation that provide co-benefits for achievement of the SDGs, in support of a nature-positive future. This report presents the global status of PAs and OECMs and opportunities for action, focusing on coverage and quality elements of effective management and equitable governance. Recognition is given to Indigenous Peoples' territories and the need to secure tenure rights, as well as embed PAs and OECMs into national policies and frameworks.

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CNN

November 1, 2021
An arid region of open forests and grasslands spanning three countries and more than a quarter of a million square miles, this is Gran Chaco. It's the second-largest forest in South America after the Amazon, but has long been neglected, suffering from deforestation, agricultural expansion and the effects of climate change.

When Bolivian conservation biologist Erika Cuéllar first saw the vast expanse in 1997, she was overcome by an urge to restore it. "I am very attracted to arid lands. When I was young, I was angry that nobody cared about dry lands and everybody cared about tropical rainforest," she says.

Despite looking open and empty, the area is teeming with unique vegetation and wildlife, from jaguars and ocelots to piranhas and vipers. It's also home to nine million people, including several indigenous communities.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation - OpEd

October 26, 2021
Last week, leaders from around the world came together at a global summit to negotiate a comprehensive plan to safeguard nature around the world. 

Whether the resulting global strategy, expected to be finalized in 2022, is sufficiently ambitious and successful will be influenced by one item: the degree to which countries put advancing human rights, in general, and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, in particular, at the heart of their plans and real actions.

Science has recently shown what many of us have always known, that indigenous peoples and local communities have historically been and still are the best stewards of nature. Biodiversity is declining less on indigenous lands and traditional territories than elsewhere in the world, and an outsized proportion of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in these areas. 

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New Strait Times

October 14, 2021
At a meeting of Parties to the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, world governments are looking ahead to the adoption of new goals and targets for nature to be met this decade: CBD's "Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework" (GBF).

The draft framework lays out broad actions to help transform society's relationship with biodiversity and fulfil a previously agreed shared vision of "living in harmony with nature" by 2050.

This week's online summit Part One sets the stage for a decisive face-to-face meeting in April. Among the new targets is one advanced by the Campaign for Nature (CFN): protect 30 per cent of the world's land and marine areas by 2030.

These should consist of protected areas and "other effective area-based conservation measures" (OECMs), such as territories inhabited by indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs).

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The Conversation

October 7, 2021
We are currently facing a mass extinction of plants and animals. To remedy this, world leaders have pledged a huge expansion of protected areas ahead of the UN biodiversity summits to be held in October 2021 and May 2022 in Kunming, China.

The focus on how much of the planet to conserve overshadows questions of how nature should be conserved and by whom. In the past some conservation organisations have seen indigenous and local communities as undermining environmental conservation.

Our research strongly contradicts this. Our recent publication in Ecology and Society shows the best way to protect both nature and human wellbeing is for indigenous and local communities to be in control. That conclusion stems from examining examples of conservation projects carried out since 2000 and their results. Our international team of 17 scientists studied the effects on habitats and species and local communities.

We found improvements for conservation and people are much more likely when indigenous and local communities are environmental stewards. When in charge, local communities can establish a shared vision for conserving the environments they live in and for coexisting with wildlife. 

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