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The vision of the Land Portal Foundation is to improve land governance to benefit those with the most insecure land rights and the greatest vulnerability to landlessness through information and knowledge sharing.
The International Land and Forest Tenure Facility is focused on securing land and forest rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. We are the first financial mechanism to exclusively fund projects working towards this goal while reducing conflict, driving development, improving global human rights, and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Date: 14th September 2023
Time: 9:00-10:00 AM EST, 15:00-16:00 CEST
While talk of carbon markets has been prominent of late, offsetting using forest carbon has long been controversial. Carbon markets are trading systems through which countries, businesses, individuals or other entities buy or sell units of greenhouse gas emissions. Advocates of offsetting carbon see it as a way of compensating for residual emissions as the global north transitions to a low-carbon economy while also channeling much needed finance for forests. Its critics warn that it dispossesses Indigenous Peoples and local communities and reduces forests to only their carbon value.
The question that this webinar will center on is the following: In this growing acceptance of carbon markets, how are Indigenous communities being left behind? The absence of Free, Prior and Informed (FPIC) consent as well as other safeguards in these processes is a growing challenge. But Indigenous communities are concerned with a notable absence in terms of their involvement in carbon markets and the social impacts that these markets can have on their communities.
How do land rights get figured into data collection processes, so that we can achieve a high-integrity carbon project and market? Data collection on hectares is challenging the current carbon market model, which excludes the daily scenarios faced by Indigenous communities with land grabbing and illegal excursions. The carbon market model does not factor in the lack of land rights many Indigenous people are facing and fighting for, making them more vulnerable because the markets provide an incentive for exploitation.
SPEAKERS
- Levi Sucre Romero, is an Indigenous Bribri Costa Rican who currently serves as Coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB), representing indigenous peoples and local communities in the territories encompassed between Panama and México. Since 2022 he has been acting as Co-Chair to the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities. Levi also directs the technical and organizational management of the Bribri-Cabécar Indigenous Network (RIBCA), a group of eight indigenous territories in Costa Rica.
- Marco Aurelio Chávez Coyoy, is a member of the Maya K'iche' community. Currently, he is the coordinator of the legal department of the Community Forestry Association of Guatemala Utz Che'.
- Marisol García Apagueño, is a Kichwa leader of the Tupac Amaru indigenous community and currently secretary of the Federation of Kichwa Indigenous Peoples of Chazuta Amazonas (FEPIKECHA). She has served on the board of the Coordinating Committee for the Development and Defence of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM), a regional indigenous federation that is part of AIDESEP.
- Katherine Lofts, is the Senior Research Associate with the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Health, and the Environment at McGill University and conducts research on global efforts to build linkages between human rights and climate change. For more than a decade, she has led and collaborated on a range of projects and publications relating to climate change, human rights, and environmental governance.
The Land Dialogues webinar series promotes the centrality of Indigenous and community land rights in advancing global efforts to halt the climate crisis, achieving a healthy planet and forwarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It focuses on the importance of formally recognising and securing the customary lands of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as a crucial contribution to the overall climate health of the planet.
The Land Dialogues 2023 series shed light on a variety of important issues regarding the agency of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ land rights; from the power differentials that existed concerning Indigenous land data, to Indigenous Peoples and Local communities taking back control of the dialogues and discussions with donors regarding climate funds.
In 2022 we remain in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, increasingly violent weather events connected to the changing climate, and global security tensions due to war and conflict. Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are among the most vulnerable and are both directly and indirectly hard-hit by these events.
The Land Portal Foundation, the Tenure Facility, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the Ford Foundation proposed a series of Land Dialogues promoting the centrality of Indigenous and community land rights in advancing global efforts to halt the climate crisis, achieving a healthy planet and forwarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Under the umbrella of the Land Dialogues series, the third webinar of this year’s series “Carbon markets and Indigenous lands : The importance of free, prior and informed consent” took place on September 14th, 2023. The webinar drew in a little under 500 participants and featured panelists from Indigenous leaders to academics. The series is organized by a consortium of organizations, including the Land Portal Foundation, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Tenure Facility.