The first global pact backing indigenous land rights launched

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The International Land and Forest Tenure Facility – the first and only global institution dedicated to securing the land rights of indigenous communities worldwide – was formally launched in Stockholm on Tuesday.

Disputes over land rights in tropical forests teeming with exploitable resources – from hardwoods to precious stones to oil – can quickly escalate into deadly conflict, and local peoples more often than not wind up on the losing end.

More than 200 environmental campaigners, nearly half from indigenous tribes, were murdered around the world in 2016 alone, according to watchdog NGO Global Witness.

Aerial view of the Amazon rainforest in Mato Grosso /Csmonitor Photo

Restoring some measure of control to the original inhabitants of forests appropriated by corrupt governments or extraction industries has also proven an effective bulkhead against global warming, according to a 2014 global survey by the US-based World Resources Institute, a think tank.

In Brazil, for example, deforestation in indigenous community forests from 2000 to 2012 was less than one percent, compared with seven percent outside those areas.

Tropical vegetation soaks up planet-warming CO2 emitted by the burning of fossil fuels. Destroying these forests outright not only reduces the area available to absorb carbon dioxide, it also releases CO2 into the atmosphere, accounting in recent decades – along with agriculture and livestock – for more than a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Logging machine at Bialowieza forest. /Reuters Photo

"Creating mechanisms that allow indigenous peoples and local communities to gain tenure over their land or forests is a way to tackle both these problems," said Ford Foundation president Darren Walker. He has pledged 5 million US dollars and expects – based on other grants in the pipeline – the facility to have 100 million US dollars within a year.

The project aims over the span of a decade to boost forestland properly titled to indigenous peoples by 40 million hectares, an area twice the size of Spain.

Such efforts, they calculate, would prevent deforestation of one million hectares and the release of 500 million tonnes of CO2, more than the annual emissions of Britain or Brazil.

Source(s): AFP