Implementation of the COP26 declaration to halt forest loss must safeguard and include Indigenous people

At COP26, more than 140 countries agreed to halt deforestation by 2030. In this recently published piece, Dr Sarobidy Rakotonarivo from the Forest4Cliamte&People project (and coauthors) reflects on the implications for the lives of indigenous peoples' and forest-dwelling communities (IPLCs). They argue that although these global commitments acknowledge the role of IPLCs in conservation, the true costs of this conservation remain elusive and ILPCs have already critiqued their limited inclusion in the COP26 deliberations. Besides questions of political feasibility and practical implementation, evidence is scant that conventional policy tools such as incentives, compensation and legal coercion can effectively achieve sustainable land use in contested areas like forest conservation. To avoid any unintended consequences on IPLCs, they suggest i) more locally grounded social-impact assessments, supported by GIS, that assess the multidimensional livelihood implications of conservation, including drivers of deforestation that originate from outside forces, ii) an online database platform with independent oversight would support the open sharing of such a growing and systematically developed evidence base of the social and ecological consequences of conservation. 

You can read the article here.

Publication date: 19 January 2022