CLOSING THE GAP: Strategies and scale needed to secure rights and save forests
...the customary rights of communities and
Indigenous Peoples to forests, rangelands, and wetlands are often not
written down or shown on government maps, but they are a fundamental
reality. They cover more than 50 percent of the world’s land surface, yet
new research by RRI in 2015 showed that just 10 percent of the world’s
land is legally recognized as community-owned.2
This means that governments formally recognize communities’
ownership rights to less than 20 percent of the land they have
historically owned.