Digital edition: Bonn 2019

Celebrating the diversity of nature and humans – and of the relationships between them – brings us closer to the transformative solutions we need. Only by changing our thinking and learning to accept, understand and honor all perspectives can we rewrite together the collective story of our shared future. How can we challenge and change the existing narrative?

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What are the secret ingredients to success? Listen to inspiring visionaries whose innovative approaches are strengthening collaboration and fostering mutual trust. Their insights will light the way and unite the audience to ensure 2019 marks a turning point for how rights, traditional knowledge, and solutions from the ground are respected, considered, and implemented.

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This session will involve an interactive panel discussion that will focus on how best to scale up recognition of land rights across the developing world. Other topics include early lessons from the Tenure Facility’s experience in designing and delivering projects to scale-up implementation; as well as actions to address operational, institutional and financial gaps and constraints.

Delegates to the event can discuss the significance of research showing that community-managed forests tend to experience lower rates of deforestation, store more carbon, hold more biodiversity, and benefit more people than forestlands managed by either public or private entities. The Tenure Facility has demonstrated the speed at which laws can be implemented when funding is provided directly to rights-holder organizations and their allies. In just over two years, the Tenure Facility has enabled communities to advance rights recognition over more than 6.5 million hectares of land.

In that context, the session will consider how aligning international commitments and priorities with emerging national demand and opportunities to scale up rights could dramatically shift the global pendulum towards a more sustainable, equitable and climate-resilient future for all.

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This session will share and discuss approaches and experiences to ensure climate policies, actions and financial instruments are inclusive, notably in terms of promoting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as mainstreaming gender equality. It will focus on forested landscapes and on efforts to reduce deforestation to address the climate crisis. Representatives from indigenous peoples, as rights holders, will present their cases, which will be commented by representatives from development partners. The discussions aim at scoping the opportunities of climate policy & finance to advancing the rights of indigenous peoples, and the approaches required to harness them.

SPEAKERS

Indigenous/Community rights holders:

• Mr. Lakpa Nuri Sherpa – Coordinator, Climate Change Monitoring & Information Network, AIPP.
• Ms. Naw Ei Ei Min – Promotion of Indigenous and Nature Together (POINT), Myanmar; and Member of the Counsel, AIPP.
• Mr. Felipe Rangel – Territorial Counsellor, Colombia’s National Indigenous Organisation (ONIC).
• Mr. Lizardo Cauper – President, AIDESEP, Peru.
• Mr. Juan Carlos Jintiach – Coordinator, International Economic Cooperation & Autonomous Indigenous Development, COICA, Ecuador.
• Mr. Gustavo Sánchez – President of the Red MOCAF
• Ms. Grace Balawag – Coordinator, Climate Change, Tebtebba. Indigenous Peoples’ Representative a.i., UN-REDD Executive Board.

Development partners:

• Ms. Roselyn Adjei – Director of Climate Change, Forestry Commission, Ghana. Country Representative, UN-REDD Executive Board.
• Ms. Nonette Royo – Executive Director, The Tenure Facility.
• Mr. Leif John Fosse – Lead specialist on Indigenous Peoples, NICFI, Norway.
• Ms. Celina Yong – Regional advisor (Asia/Pacific), UN-REDD.

Facilitator: Ms. Serena Fortuna (UN-REDD)
Synthesis: Mr. Josep Garí (UN-REDD)

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Taking action together: how we can address the growing threats of violence and criminalisation of indigenous peoples & environmental rights defenders

During this session, representatives of Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples will speak directly to the threats they face in defending their lands from encroachment. Representatives of UN agencies as well as private-sector speakers will reflect on measures proposed or already being taken to address threats against Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples and how to understand and fill remaining gaps.

Speakers will discuss root causes of these threats, including exclusionary conservation and expansion of agribusinesses. Concerns with these threats were highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Michel Forst, in 2016 when he raised the alarm in a special report concerning growing violence against environmental and human rights defenders.

The worrying trend of attacks against – and at times, criminalisation of Indigenous and environmental human rights defenders – has also been documented by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz.

This event is kindly hosted by the Forest Peoples Programme.

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This event will tackle questions related to the integration of tenure rights into regional landscape development planning. Representatives from Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), as well as civil society stakeholders and government delegates, will review key measures necessary for effective collaboration among various sectors of society.

The session will focus attention on the importance of reconnecting human prosperity and ecosystem resilience to secure land tenure for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This has become particularly important, given the severe effects of climate change, habitat loss, and land degradation as well as social disruption and inequality. Although much of the land occupied by Indigenous Peoples around the world is under Indigenous customary ownership, many governments recognize only a fraction of this land as being formally or legally belonging to Indigenous Peoples. Yet, legally recognized and secure land and resource rights are fundamental to achieving peace, prosperity, and sustainability

This session will include local and Indigenous community members, including members from the Governors Climate and Forests Task Force from Indonesia (Papua) and Peru (Loreto/Madre de Dios). They will share their progress, as well as challenges, in implementing tenure agreements and dealing with deforestation driven by illegal extractive activities and agribusinesses expansion.

Co-sponsoring organisations:
Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN),
Sociedad Peruana de derecho Ambiental (SPDA)
Foundation for Community Initiatives (FCI)
Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF)
United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP)

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