Land managed by indigenous people holds vastly more carbon than previously thought, according to a report that calls for an urgent strengthening of their land rights to avoid its release into the atmosphere.
The legalisation of indigenous people’s rights to forested land is one way of supporting sustainable forest management that keeps carbon locked-in, contributing to climate change mitigation.
But while communities have succeeded in securing governmental recognition of their forest rights for 15 per cent of forests globally, the pace of recognition since 2008 has decreased, according to the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the organisation behind a second report.
This leaves their stewardship on precarious ground, they say, with forests more vulnerable to national-level decisions which may turn land over to logging, commercial agriculture or infrastructure projects that release carbon into the atmosphere.
Read more at SciDev.Net
Photo Credit: MONUSCO via Wikimedia Commons
.jpg){kind=link}