Two months ago, the Land Rights Standard was launched alongside the UN Climate Change Conference (CoP27) in Egypt—a first-of-its-kind document developed over the course of three years with more than 70 Indigenous, local, and Afro-descendant groups, elegantly but firmly laying out pathways for “taking into account and respecting their distinct and differentiated rights, including their autonomy, priorities, and cosmovision,” as is stated in its preamble.
One year ago, thanks to a Solutions Journalism Network LEDE Fellowship and in collaboration with the Land Portal, I started a project to find stories of responses to the damage caused to the land and environment. During this time, I affirmed that communities and people around the world are working to protect and heal the environment, even if those stories hardly make it to the mainstream media.
In the last 15 years, Paraguay lost a greater share of its forest than almost any other country on Earth. While soy farming once drove deforestation in the east, the focus of Paraguay's forest loss has since moved west to the low-lying, thorn-forested Chaco, where cattle ranching has claimed over 3.7 million hectares (9 million acres) of forest for pastureland – an area about the size of the Netherlands – between 2001 and 2015.
Wetlands are among the most important natural resources in Uganda. They protect the country’s water resources, and are important for sustaining agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods, particularly in areas with low or unpredictable rainfall, land scarcity, or where surrounding land has low potential for agriculture.
When Fatima Zahrae Taribi, a 20-year-old Moroccan climate justice advocate, met Luz Edith Morales Jimenez, a young land defender from Michoacán, Mexico, she wondered how they could communicate. Zahrae speaks French, Arabic, and English, and Morales speaks Spanish and Purépecha, an Indigenous language from her region. Yet, when they met in a climate camp in Tunisia ahead of the international climate conference COP27, the UN's annual international environmental conference, they understood each other without needing words.
This week, world leaders and diplomats are converging on the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh for the 27th United Nations Climate Conference – better known as COP27.
The Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), together with its grassroots organisations, is present at the 27th UN Conference on Climate Change to reaffirm what needs to be done to tackle the global climate crisis: RECOGNIZE AND GUARANTEE LAND TENURE RIGHTS OF OUR INDIGENOUS LANDS!
In this blog we talk to Maria-Clara van der Hammen, who has worked with indigenous communities in Colombia for many years with Tropenbos, one of the LAND-at-scale partners in Colombia. For the moment the project is being applied with Koreguaje and Macaguaje communities in the Colombian Amazon region who live mainly from slash and burn agriculture, fishing and hunting and the commercialization in small amounts of agricultural and forest products.
Achieving the twin goals of protecting the planet and improving humanity’s wellbeing relies on women having the agency and space to co-govern the natural resources they - and their families - depend on for their livelihoods. Reflecting on COP27’s Gender Day, we look at how better understanding women’s access to, use, and control of land, forests and natural resources in Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) could be utilised to support climate action.
Climate change is a fact in Mozambique given the geographical location of this country which places it in a position of vulnerability. The most recorded effects in communities are prolonged drought, floods, strong winds and cyclones jeopardizing livelihoods due to low production and productivity.
The LAND-at-scale program acknowledges the central role of climate change. In a short series of blogs, the knowledge management team highlights the diverse impact that climate change has on communities across the world, and how LAND-at-scale projects contribute to adaptation and mitigation measures on the ground. In this blog we talk to Karel Boers, who works with IOM UN-Migration as a durable solutions program M&E coordinator for the Saameynta program in Somalia.
