ADOPTED BY THE ILC ASSEMBLY OF MEMBERS ON 27 SEPTEMBER 2018

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – A half mile from the din of the Global Climate Action Summit and its 4,000 attendees in San Francisco, indigenous peoples from around the world came together in a small space for a kind of summit of their own.

They spoke different languages. They wore unique clothing. But the tenor of their voices and the expressions on their faces conveyed a similar message: They are the “guardians of the forests,” not their national governments. As such, they have a vital role to play in the battle against climate change.

Faced with groundwater depletion, Uganda is restoring its wetlands and planting millions of trees to improve supply

MBARARA, Uganda - In the village of Katebe, Ugandan schoolchildren have little choice but to drink from the same water supply as animals.

During the dry season from June to August, Kyakatarihwa dam is the only source of water for people and livestock alike in this remote part of southwest Uganda's Mbarara district.

NAIROBI (Landscapes News) – Rangelands cover almost half the world’s land surface. Consisting mainly of grasses, and plants, they have often been considered barren lands that should be converted to agriculture.

NAIROBI (Landscape News) – Land tenure rights are widely recognized as being central to advancing sustainable development goals, but they are only one part of the picture.

As it happens, tenure rights to trees are entangled with, but different from, those to land, meaning both must be acknowledged to incentivize stewardship of the landscape by local communities, said delegates at the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Nairobi.

SINGRAULI, India -- After years of developing the thermal energy sector to meet the demands of a nation prone to outages, India is now facing a power glut with over 30 such producers teetering on bankruptcy. Yet the government shows no letup in its drive for more coal power and the effect of oversupply is rippling out to other sectors such as banks.

India's embrace of coal has allowed it to triple power generation over the past 15 years to 344 gigawatts, surpassing Japan to become the world's third largest electricity market.

NAIROBI (Landscape News) – Almost a third of Africa’s land mass is degraded due to human activities – including farming and resource extraction – which damage the environment and put food security and livelihoods at risk.

Landscape restoration can reverse damage and lead to improvements for communities, but how are obstacles overcome and changes implemented?

MONTREAL — In 2006, India’s parliament passed the Forest Rights Act, or FRA — a groundbreaking legislation that recognizes the rights of forest dwellers to protect and manage forest resources.

In the hills of northern Sikkim in northeast India, the Drokpa community live peaceful yet difficult lives. The hills resound with the songs the Drokpas have for every activity. These are not your usual villagers who reside in the same place for decades and have a set source of livelihood. Rather, the Drokpas, as their name suggests are nomads—“drokpa” is a Tibetan word that can be roughly translated as “nomad” or “high pastoral people”. For the last several generations, however, the Drokpas have followed an occupation that might soon disappear from Sikkim: herding yak.

The Land Portal is an independent nonprofit foundation based in The Netherlands. The Land Portal pioneered the open data revolution in the land sector and is committed to building an information ecosystem for land governance that ultimately supports better informed decision and policy making at local, national and international levels.

Climate change needs behavior change.What people eat, what they buy and what they use contributes directly to climate change. In just eight months, humans consume what the earth can sustainably produce in a single year. Nearly two-thirds of global emissions are linked to both direct and indirect forms of human consumption – even conservative estimates for the potential of changing behaviors to reduce consumption of natural resources suggest an enormous contribution to reducing global emissions.

"Gender, Land and Mining in Pastoralist Tanzania" is the product of rigorous field research over two years by WOLTS team members from Mokoro and HakiMadini. Significant stresses from mining, population growth and climate change, as well as disturbing levels of violence against women have been uncovered in this study of two traditional pastoralist communities in Tanzania. Initial findings are based on repeat rounds of participatory fieldwork by the WOLTS team and have already received attention at national and local level.