Statement on rainforest, communities and climate change

REDD could represent an opportunity, but only if it recognizes and rewards the rights and roles of indigenous peoples and local communities in protecting the rainforest.

Rainforest in Papua New Guinea. Photo: Nils Hermann Ranum
Foto: Arne Nevra

From June 15 through 17, 2009, over one hundred people from 14 different countries representing 50 indigenous and civil society organizations gathered in Norway to discuss issues that we are engaged in on a daily basis, but which affect the world as a whole: climate change, forest protection, and the role of indigenous peoples and local communities.  Although we come from all corners of the globe and diverse country contexts, our forest communities share the same challenges and concerns.  As organizations active in rainforest countries, we have long worked on securing the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, ensuring sustainable community-based management of forests, and protecting biodiversity, clean water and the multiple other benefits of healthy forest ecosystems.  Climate change presents new challenges, but our core activities are already contributing to the solution. By protecting and promoting the rights of forest peoples, we are keeping the rainforest standing and thereby addressing climate change.  Deforestation and forest degradation account for 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions every year, so the work we are engaged in - and are committed to deepening - is critical.

For governments and corporations, forests are a matter of profit and loss; for indigenous peoples and local communities, they are a matter of life and death.  These divergent interests have led to social conflict and violations of human rights.   In defending their lands and forests, indigenous peoples have faced threats and in some instances, outright violence.  Such was recently the case in Peru, where several dozen indigenous people were killed while protesting the expansion of destructive activities in their forests. The tragic events in Peru provide a stark reminder of the importance of respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and particularly their right to free, prior and informed consent regarding any activities affecting their lands, territories, and resources.

Forests are far more than carbon stores.  They are home to more than 350 million people around the world who are wholly dependent on them for their survival.  In fact, the whole planet depends on rainforests for its survival; thriving forests provide us with oxygen, fresh water, vital medicines and countless other benefits, including socio-cultural values.  Indigenous peoples and local communities have been the primary guardians of the rainforest since time immemorial, through their systems of traditional knowledge and use.

Over time, we have seen many initiatives that aimed to protect forests.  Most of them have failed because they have come from the top down and have not included the very people at the front lines of rainforest protection - the communities who live in and from the forest.  Emerging initiatives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation - known as REDD - must not repeat the errors of the past. 

REDD could represent an opportunity, but only if it recognizes and rewards the rights and roles of indigenous peoples and local communities in protecting the rainforest.  Any forest-climate initiative must: 

• be inclusive and guarantee broad participation of indigenous peoples and local communities from the design and planning to the implementation and monitoring phases;
• respect and adhere to international laws, conventions and norms protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including the right of indigenous peoples to free, prior and informed consent, as well as customary laws and practices of forest-dependent peoples;
• strengthen the roles, rights, and capacities of indigenous peoples and local communities and their organisations, and reinforce and promote indigenous resource management systems and traditional knowledge ;
• be based upon secure community land and natural resource tenure and customary ownership and use rights as prerequisites for effective forest protection;
• support and promote good governance especially in relation to forest policies and law enforcement;
• guarantee lasting protection of native forests, as sources of livelihoods and tremendous biodiversity, and recognize that plantations are not forests;
• tackle the real drivers of deforestation and forest degradation - such as industrial logging and conversion of forests for plantations, agro-industrial uses, large-scale mining and other extractive industries, and infrastructure development ;
• strive to reduce consumption of timber and other forest and large-scale agricultural products that come from degraded and converted forest lands;
• ensure that benefits are transparently and equitably shared and reach forest communities ;
• guarantee access to transparent, impartial and participatory conflict prevention, resolution and complaint mechanisms to ensure that communities are able to seek justice for negative impacts of REDD-related activities and address conflicts that may arise over forest ownership, use and access;
• prevent industrialised countries from using REDD initiatives to avoid reducing their own emissions;
• reinforce government obligations to respect and promote the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including by guaranteeing their basic needs, and fulfilling the right to sustainable development.

While the world's interest in the importance of forests for the climate presents tremendous opportunities to change the way rainforest countries pursue development, the possibility of failure looms large. If REDD does not respect the principles listed above, it could fail forests, forest peoples, and the planet. REDD could represent an important new beginning; let's make sure it's not the beginning of the end.

June 18, 2009 - Oslo, Norway