Forest Peoples Programme Annual Report 2010

It is an old English custom that on your 21st birthday, you are given the ‘keys to the door’, symbolising your right to control property. As the Forest Peoples Programme completes its 21st year, it is finally becoming clear to policy-makers that the key to sustainable, equitable and climate-friendly development of forests is respect for the rights of forest peoples, including their right to ‘property’ – to own and control their ancestral forests, " writes Marcus Colchester in Forest Peoples Programme's newly released Annual Report for 2010.