Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs) cover between 12 and 22 percent of the earth’ territory. There is convincing evidence that ICCAs do not only sustain many unique cultures and livelihoods, but that they are also far more effective as far as forest conservation and restoration is concerned than conventional protected areas. Together with other members of the ICCA consortium [http://www.iccaconsortium.org/] we promote the legal and political recognition of ICCAs and the autonomous governance structures and rights of the communities that manage them.
Together with other groups we have also started a Community Conservation Resilience Initiative to assess and strengthen the resilience of community conservation. Through participatory processes, we encourage communities to assess the resilience of their own conservation practices in light of external and internal threats, and to develop concrete, bottom-up recommendations for appropriate support for their conservation practices.
Towards Demand-driven Support for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities
Conserving biocultural diversity and respecting and promoting the rights and role of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and women in nurturing biocultural diversity is of fundamental importance to reducing and reversing deforestation and biodiversity loss in general.
The Community Conservation Resilience Initiative was established by an informal alliance of national and international Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, non-governmental organisations and social movements that shared a joint belief in community governance and rights-based approaches to ecosystem conservation and restoration. Aside from the Global Forest Coalition key partners include Natural Justice, the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee and the ICCA Consortium.
IPLCs as a Cornerstone
It is broadly recognized that Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) play a central role in the implementation of ecosystem conservation and restoration strategies on the ground.
The Community Conservation Resilience Initiative carries out a participatory assessment of the resilience of Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs) and other biocultural conservation approaches.
It recognizes the cultural value in these approaches and seeks to explore and promote the legal, political, socio-economic, financial, technical, and capacity-building support that could be provided to sustain and strengthen these initiatives and approaches.
Policy support
The initiative will use the findings of the community assessments for national and international advocacy campaigns that will promote policies that provide effective and appropriate forms of support to the endogenous, biocultural approaches to biodiversity conservation and restoration implemented by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, including ICCAs.
This brief provides a summary of the 2018 global report of the Community Conservation Resilience Initiative (CCRI) and sets out overarching recommendations for select draft decisions of the 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP14). The recommendations are drawn from the CCRI assessments and the second Fostering Community Conservation Conference. Download the briefing: High resolution (3.1MB) | Low resolution (1.1MB)
Welcome to the 56th issue of Forest Cover, the Global Forest Coalition’s magazine. It provides a space for environmental justice activists from across the world to present their views on…
Rural communities in Georgia practice a wide range of forest and biodiversity conservation techniques, which have great potential to provide sustainable livelihoods and protect the environment. This has been highlighted…
Download the summary report here Introduction The CCRI assessment in Georgia involved three communities. Two of them, Sakorintlo and Okami, are in East Georgia, in the region of Shida Khartli…
Speakers, presentations and events at Fostering Community Conservation II, July 2018, Montreal * This page works best in Firefox or Chrome, you may experience problems if using Safari. Group photo…
By the Global Forest Coalition Indigenous Peoples have been protecting biodiversity on Earth for thousands of years. Yet their rights are increasingly being eroded and they face multiple threats. On…
4 July 2018, Montreal: Over one hundred Indigenous Peoples, local community representatives, and forest activists from across the world have gathered in Montreal to demand an end to top-down and…
27 June 2018: Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ conservation practices are fundamental to biodiversity conservation, but these barely receive support or recognition from governments, argues the Global Forest Coalition [1]…
The 22nd meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-22) and the 2nd meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-2) of the Convention on Biological…
Download the summary report (Nepal) Introduction The Federation of Community Forestry Users in Nepal (FECOFUN) conducted the CCRI assessment with communities in the Barandabhar corridor, the Basanta corridor and the…
