According to a recent study, indigenous people and local communities are able to conserve forests by investing only 16–23 per cent of the amount spent by governments and NGOs
Experts have speculated that at least 50% of the world’s land
has been held customarily by local communities. Credit: Agnimirh Basu 2017 was the second-worst year for tropical forests since 2001 with the tree cover loss amounting to 15.8 million hectares (mha). This is equivalent to losing 40 football fields of trees every minute for an entire year. In fact, in the last two years—2016 and 2017—tropical developing countries had lost an area of forest the size of Vietnam. These findings were released at the recently concluded Oslo Tropical Forest Forum.
Tropical deforestation is globally acknowledged to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and therefore, linked to climate change. Concerted efforts have been made over the last decade to reduce deforestation. New mechanisms like reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, also called REDD+, have been permanently enshrined in the Paris Agreement as the way forward to achieve emission reduction from deforestation.
Recognition of community rights essential for curbing deforestation
The latest figures on tree cover loss, however, have got the forest fraternity scratching their heads to figure out what has gone wrong.
At the same forum, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli Corpuz, issued a powerful statement. “We have stood as a proven solution to climate change for generations. Recognize our rights, and we can continue to do so for generations to come,” said her letter to the world leaders.
Corpuz’s demand is explained by the emerging global evidence establishing the direct link between secure land and forest tenure with reduced rates of deforestation. A 2015 study conducted in the Amazon basin showed that the recognition of indigenous and community rights to forests is an effective strategy to combat deforestation. In Brazil and Colombia, the deforestation rate was 2.5 and 2 times lower in tenure-secure indigenous lands as compared to lands without tenure security. Another study, encompassing Asia and Latin America, demonstrated that wildfires were more limited in multiple-use protected areas (PAs) under management by indigenous peoples and local communities than in government-managed PAs.
While exact figures are not available, experts have speculated that at least 50 per cent of the world’s land has been held customarily by these communities. Despite the mounting evidence in favour of recognition of rights of indigenous peoples and conservation outcomes, the process of conferring ownership of these lands, particularly forestlands, upon these communities has moved at a slow pace.
Less investment; equal outcome
Throwing weight behind the demands of indigenous peoples and activists, a new research by Washington-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) has found that indigenous peoples and local communities are able to achieve equivalent conservation outcomes by investing only a fraction of the total money spent on conservation by all other agencies. The investment includes labour and cash provided by local communities for conservation actions like forest management, fire protection and management, restoration and rehabilitation, patrolling/policing, and biodiversity mapping.
The global spending on conservation is estimated to be US$21.5 billion per year. Of this, spending on Protected Areas is about $6–6.5 billion per year, going up to $13 billion if the newly created PAs are included in the estimation. This works out to an average annual expenditure of $14.70 per hectare for all categories of protected areas as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). On the other hand, findings from 29 case studies in 14 low- and middle-income countries estimate that indigenous peoples and local communities spend just $3.57 per hectare per year on conservation. “Globally, therefore, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are investing an estimated 16–23 per cent ($3.16 billion–4.57 billion) of the amount spent by governments, donors, foundations, and nongovernmental organisations, combined, on conservation,” says the RRI study.
The findings of the research become significant in light of the negotiations on climate change finance happening in international fora. The quantum of pledges for REDD+ finance has been lower than expected, and the disbursement has been way below the pledges. As the deadline for the Rulebook on Paris Agreement draws closer, the world leaders stand to benefit from the latest findings. Are they listening?
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