Why Indigenous and Community Land Rights?

Overview

Up to 2.5 billion people live in community arrangements worldwide. They directly manage over 50 percent of the world’s land, including much of the remaining forestland and biodiversity hotspots. Communities are proven to be the most effective guardians of their lands and forests, providing a critical bulwark against climate change. Yet legal recognition continues to lag, with only 10 percent of the world’s lands recognized as owned by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Closing this gap in rights recognition represents the world’s single greatest opportunity—in terms of land coverage and number of people affected—to advance global climate and development goals. It is also critical for protecting human rights and women’s rights. When communities defend their lands in the absence of legal rights, violence and criminalization is often the result.

In many places, the enabling conditions are already in place to scale up rights recognition. Between 2002 and 2017, an area three times the size of Spain was recognized for communities. If just four countries implemented existing laws, the world could double these gains, and much more could be achieved if other countries followed their lead. This would improve the lives of millions of forest people and give all humanity a better chance of weathering the climate crisis.

Key Messages and Data Points

Secure community land and resource rights are essential for the sustainable management and conservation of forests.[1] Forests that are legally owned and/or designated for use by Indigenous Peoples and local communities are linked to:

• • Lower rates of deforestation and forest degradation;[2]

  • Reduced conflict, illegal appropriation, and large-scale land use / land cover change;[3]

  • Lower carbon emissions and higher carbon storage;[4]

  • Greater investment in forest maintenance activities;[5]

  • Better forest and biodiversity conservation;[6]

  • More equitable and sustainable forest restoration efforts;[7]

  • More benefits for more people;[8] and

  • Better social, environmental, and economic outcomes overall than forests managed by either public or private entities, including protected areas.[9]

Communities manage at least 22% (218 gigatons) of the total carbon found in tropical and subtropical forests (including both above- and below-ground sources). At least a third of this carbon lies in areas where Indigenous Peoples and local communities lack formal recognition of their tenure. Failure to legally recognize community rights leaves these forests vulnerable to environmentally destructive projects that devastate forests and release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.[10]

Indigenous Peoples’ lands intersect with around 40% of all protected areas and more than 65% of the most remote and least inhabited lands on Earth.[11] Protecting communities’ rights to lands they customarily manage is essential for the struggle against climate change, protection of the world’s biodiversity, and restoration of degraded lands.[12]

• According to the IPBES assessment and other recent analyses, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are as effective—and often better—at protecting biodiversity than state-governed protected areas.[13]

• Indigenous and local community management of nature and biodiversity contributes directly to societal needs in rural and urban areas alike through the provision of food, fiber, material, and medicine; the preservation of biodiversity; and the conservation of watersheds.[14]

• Cultural and biological diversity are deeply inter-related, making traditional knowledge systems essential to the protection of global biodiversity[15] and the maintenance or development of effective environmental governance institutions.[16]

• Indigenous and local knowledge systems are strongly associated with sustainable management of land and natural resources, and adaptation to climate change.[17]

The rights of women—who increasingly play an outsize role as leaders, forest managers, and economic providers—are particularly critical. Rural and indigenous women contribute to the welfare of their households and the ability of communities to confront both social and environmental threats[18]—but their limited ability to exercise their rights places them, their land, and their communities at risk.[19]

The persistent gap between the legal and customary rights of communities puts communities at risk of rollback, violence, and unjust prosecution (criminalization).[20]

Indigenous Peoples and local communities customarily manage more than 50% of the world’s lands, yet legally own only 10%.[21] The gap between customary use and legally recognized community rights to forests is similar. According to the most recent analysis, communities exercise formal rights to only 15.3% of the world’s forests.

Recognition of community forest rights is increasing, but much more could be achieved if existing laws were implemented. The total forest area that is legally held by communities rose by 40% (150 million hectares) across Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the last 15 years. Implementation of existing legislation in only 4 countries (Colombia, DRC, India, and Indonesia) would more than double that progress—and benefit over 200 million people. [22]

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[1] Agrawal, Arun. 2007. Forests, Governance, and Sustainability: Common Property Theory and its Contributions. International Journal of the Commons, 1(1), 111–136; Badini, Olivia Sanchez, Reem Hajjar, and Robert Kozak. 2018. Critical success factors for small and medium forest enterprises: A review. Forest Policy and Economics 94: 35-45; Baynes, Jack, John Herbohn, Carl Smith, Robert Fisher, and David Bray. 2015. Key factors which influence the success of community forestry in developing countries. Global Environmental Change 35: 226-238; Pagdee, Adcharaporn, Yeon-su Kim, and P.J. Daugherty. 2006. What Makes Community Forest Management Successful: A Meta-Study From Community Forests Throughout the World. Society & Natural Resources 19(1): 33-52; Robinson, Brian E., Margaret B. Holland, and Lisa Naughton-Treves. 2014. Does secure land tenure save forests? A meta-analysis of the relationship between land tenure and tropical deforestation. Global Environmental Change 29: 281-293; Seymour, Frances, Tony La Vina, and Kristen Hite. 2014. Evidence linking community-level tenure and forest condition: an annotated bibliography. Climate and Land Use Alliance.

[2] Blackman, Allen, Leonardo Corral, Eirivelthon Santos Lima, and Gregory P. Asner. 2017. Titling indigenous communities protects forests in the Peruvian Amazon. PNAS, 114 (16) 4123-4128; Graziano Ceddia, M., Gunter, U., & Corriveau-Bourque, A. (2015). Land tenure and agricultural expansion in Latin America: The role of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ forest rights. Global Environmental Change, 35, 316–322. Robinson et al., 2014; Wehkamp, J., Koch, N., Lübbers, S., & Fuss, S. (2018). Governance and deforestation—a meta-analysis in economics. Ecological Economics, 144, 214–227.

[3] Blackman et al., 2017; Etchart, L. (2017). The role of indigenous peoples in combating climate change. Palgrave Communications, 3, 1–3.; Macqueen, Duncan, Anna Bolin, Martin Greijmans, Sophie Grouwels, and Shoana Humphries. 2018. Innovations towards prosperity emerging in locally controlled forest business models and prospects for scaling up. World Development; Pokorny, B., P. Pacheco, P. O. Cerutti, T. B. van Solinge, G. Kissinger, and L. Tacconi. 2016. Drivers of Illegal and Destructive Forest Use. IUFRO World Series 35; Vasco, Cristian, Bolier Torres, Pablo Pacheco, and Verena Griess. The socioeconomic determinants of legal and illegal smallholder logging: Evidence from the Ecuadorian Amazon. Forest Policy and Economics 78: 133-140.

[4] Blackman, Allen, and Peter Veit. 2018. Titled Amazon Indigenous Communities Cut Forest Carbon Emissions. Ecological Economics 153: 56-57; Chhatre, Ashwini and Arun Agrawal. 2009. 'Trade-offs and synergies between carbon storage and livelihood benefits from forest commons." PNAS, 106 (42) 17667–17670; Ding, H., Veit, P. G., Blackman, A., Gray, E., Reytar, K., Altamirano, J. C., … Org, W. R. I. (2016). Climate Benefits, Tenure Costs. The Economic Case for Securing Indigenous Land Rights in the Amazon. World Resources Institute: Washington D.C.; Nolte, Christoph, Arun Agrawal, Kirsten M. Silvius, and Britaldo S. Soares-Filho. 2016. "Governance regime and location influence avoided deforestation success of protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon." PNAS, 110 (13) 4956-4961; Stevens, C. et al. 2014. Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change: How strengthening community forest rights mitigates climate change. WRI and RRI, Washington, DC. Available at: http://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/Securing-Rights-Combating-Climate-Change.pdf.

[5] Badini et al., 2018; Seymour et al., 2014.

[6] Garnett, Stephen T., Neil D. Burgess, John E. Fa, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Zsolt Molnár, Cathy J. Robinson, James EM Watson et al. 2018. A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation. Nature Sustainability 1: 369–374; IPBES. (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science- Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondizio, J. Settele, S. Díaz, and H. T. Ngo (editors) IPBES Secretariat. Bonn, Germany; Paneque-Gálvez, Jaime, Irene Pérez-Llorente, Ana Catarina Luz, Maximilien Guèze, Jean-François Mas, Manuel J. Macía, Martí Orta-Martínez, and Victoria Reyes-García. 2018. High overlap between traditional ecological knowledge and forest conservation found in the Bolivian Amazon. Ambio 47(8): 908-923.; Robinson, B. E., Masuda, Y. J., Kelly, A., Holland, M. B., Bedford, C., Childress, M., … Veit, P. (2018). Incorporating Land Tenure Security into Conservation. Conservation Letters, 11(2); Schleicher, Judith, Carlos A. Peres, Tatsuya Amano, William Llactayo, and Nigel Leader-Williams. 2017. Conservation performance of different conservation governance regimes in the Peruvian Amazon. Scientific Reports 7(1): 11318.

[7] Cronkleton, P., Y. Artati, H. Baral, K. Paudyal, M. R. Banjane, J.L. Liu, T.Y. Tu, L. Putzel, E. Birhane, and H. Kassa. How do property rights reforms provide incentives for forest landscape restoration? Comparing evidence from Nepal, China and Ethiopia. International Forestry Review 19(4): 8-23; McLain, R., Lawry, S., Guariguata, M. R., & Reed, J. (2018). Toward a tenure-responsive approach to forest landscape restoration: A proposed tenure diagnostic for assessing restoration opportunities. Land Use Policy.

[8] Arce, J. J. C. (2019). Forests, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and employment. United Nations Forum on Forests. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/esa/forests/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/UNFF14-BkgdStudy-SDG8-March2019.pdf; Chhatre & Agrawal, 2009.

[9] Dudley, Nigel, Holly Jonas, Fred Nelson, Jeffrey Parrish, Aili Pyhälä, Sue Stolton, and James EM Watson. 2018. "The essential role of other effective area-based conservation measures in achieving big bold conservation targets." Global ecology and conservation 15 4-24; Seymour et al., 2014; Stevens et al., 2014.

[10] Rights and Resources Initiative, Woods Hole Research Center, World Resources Institute, Environmental Defense Fund, Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques, and Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica. 2018. A Global Baseline of Carbon Storage in Collective Lands. Rights and Resources Initiative: Washington D.C. Available at: https://rightsandresources.org/en/publication/global-baseline-carbon-storage-collective-lands

[11] Garnett et al., (2018)

[12] Reyes-García, V., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., McElwee, P., Molnár, Z., Öllerer, K., Wilson, S. J., & Brondizio, E. S. (2019). The contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ecological restoration. Restoration Ecology, 27(1), 3–8.

[13] Corrigan et al., (2018). Quantifying the contribution to biodiversity conservation of protected areas governed by indigenous peoples and local communities. Biological Conservation, 227, 403–4212.; IPBES (2019); Porter-Bolland et al., (2012) Community managed forests and forest protected areas: An assessment of their conservation effectiveness across the tropics. Forest Ecology and Management 268: 6–17.; Schleicher et al., (2017) Conservation performance of different conservation governance regimes in the Peruvian Amazon. Scientific Reports, 7(11318).

[14] IPBES (2019, ch. 1, p. 42)

[15] Aswani et al., (2018) Global trends of local ecological knowledge and future implications. PloS One, 13(4): e0195440.; Baptiste et al., (eds.) (2016) Knowing our Lands and Resources: Indigenous and Local Knowledge of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in the Americas. Knowledges of Nature 11. UNESCO: Paris. pp. 200.; IPBES (2019);

[16] Mistry, J., & Berardi, A. (2016) Bridging indigenous and scientific knowledge. Science, 352(6291), 1274–1275.; Mistry et al., (2016) Community owned solutions: identifying local best practices for social-ecological sustainability. Ecology and Society, 21(2).; Paneque-Gálvez et al., (2018) High overlap between traditional ecological knowledge and forest conservation found in the Bolivian Amazon. Ambio.

[17] Stringer, L.C., et al., (2009) Adaptations to climate change, drought and desertification: local insights to enhance policy in southern Africa. Environmental Science Policy, 12: 748–765.; Biggs, E.M. et al, (2013) Agricultural adaptation to climate change: observations from the Mid-Hills of Nepal. Climate & Development, 5:165–173

[18] Alvarez, I., & Lovera, S. (2016). New Times for Women and Gender Issues in Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Justice. Development, 59(3), 263–265; Cook et al., (2019) Gender quotas increase the equality and effectiveness of climate policy interventions. Nature Climate Change, 9, 330–334.; Lane, R. & R. McNaught (2009) Building gendered approaches to adaptation in the Pacific. Gender and Development 17(1), 67-80

[19] Rights and Resources Initiative. 2017. Power and Potential: A comparative analysis of national laws and regulations concerning women’s rights to community forests. RRI: Washington, D.C.

[20]United Nations. Human Rights Council (2018) Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples- Attacks and criminalization of indigenous human rights defenders. A/HRC/39/18. Available at www.theyshouldhaveknownbetter.com.

[21] Rights and Resources Initiative (2015) Who Owns the World’s Land? A global baseline of formally recognized indigenous and community land rights. RRI: Washington, DC

[22] Rights and Resources Initiative (2018) At A Crossroads: Consequential trends in recognition of community-based forest tenure from 2002-2017. RRI: Washington, D.C.