permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/02/indigenous-rights-forests-climate-change-study

Indigenous rights are key to preserving forests, climate change study finds

Leaving forests in communal hands cuts carbon emissions from deforestation,
helps communities and offers long-term economic benefits: ‘Everyone wins’


The world’s indigenous communities need to be given a bigger role in
climate stabilisation, according to a new study that shows at least a
quarter of forest carbon is stored on communal land, particularly in Brazil
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/brazil>.

The research by a group of academic institutions and environmental NGOs is
the most comprehensive effort yet to quantify the contribution of
traditional forest guardians to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Authors say the expansion of tribal land rights is the most cost-effective
way to protect forests and sequester carbon – an issue that they hope will
receive more prominence at the upcoming United Nations climate conference
in Marrakech.

The paper by the Rights and Resources Initiative, Woods Hole Research
Centre and World Resources Institute aims to encourage governments to
recognise indigenous land rights and include tribal input in national
action plans. Currently this is not the case for 167 of 188 nations in the
Paris agreement, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, which are home to some of the world’s biggest forests.

It is also likely to feed into a growing debate in Brazil, which has won
kudos for recognising more indigenous land than any other country in the
past decade but is now under a new government that has yet to be tested in
international climate talks.

Based on satellite surveys of 37 tropical countries, the study estimates
community-claimed lands sequester at least 54,546m tonnes of carbon –
roughly four times the world’s annual emissions.

Ownership of a 10th of that land is public, unrecognised or contested,
which raises the risk that it could fall into the hands of developers,
farmers, miners or others who want to clear the forest for short-term
financial gain at the expense of long-term environmental costs.