Indigenous Peoples are custodians of many of the world’s least-exploited natural areas. These places of local and global socio-ecological importance face significant threats from industrial development expansion, but the risk of conversion of these lands remains unclear. Here we combine global datasets of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, their current ecological condition, and future industrial development pressure to assess conversion threats.

Over the past two decades, growing recognition of forest-based Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) sparked forest tenure reforms to formalize IP and LC rights to forests and forest lands through a variety of mechanisms. Nevertheless, tenure security, an intended objective of such reforms, has received less attention, despite being integral to the life and livelihoods of IPs and LCs and important for forests.

Building more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems means rethinking how we consume, produce, and safeguard agrobiodiversity that can benefit the planet and secure access to nutritious food for all. This was the purpose of the 2021 Second International Agrobiodiversity Congress, convening scientists, Indigenous Peoples, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to share and advance research, nature-positive solutions, and policies.

This report was developed based on a literature review of existing laws and policies, and reports on forestry stakeholders, forestry-based mitigation options and their linkages to food systems in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. The report shows that despite forests playing a vital role in providing food security, this is often overlooked by policymakers and current national and provincial policies. Only a limited number of studies have explored this linkage across the 13 provinces of the Mekong Delta region.

The policy brief, one of four briefs on the agrarian transition in the Mekong region, explores initiatives and pathways forward to recognise customary tenure arrangements and rights over forest areas in the region. More than 70 million people in the region depend on forest areas but lack formal legal rights to use, manage, and benefit from them. Forest landscapes represent just under half of the region’s total land. Yet, over the past two decades, the region has lost a significant amount of forest due to the expansion of commercial agriculture.

Este informe examina cómo las políticas de gestión de riesgos ambientales y sociales (ESRM, por sus siglas en inglés) de los principales bancos que financian la extracción de petróleo y gas en la Amazonía no abordan plenamente los impactos adversos de su financiamiento en las personas y la naturaleza. Durante los últimos 20 años, solamente seis bancos: Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Itaú Unibanco, Santander, Bank of America y HSBC son responsables de casi la mitad (46%) de todo el financiamiento directo para las operaciones de petróleo y gas en la Amazonía.