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The role of indigenous communities in reducing climate change through sustainable land use practices

Reports & Research
August, 2019
Africa
Kenya
Latin America and the Caribbean
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The climate crisis demands urgent action, yet we live in a politically polarized and paralyzed world. As governments and other actors struggle over climate change, our environment is irreversibly changing. A United Nations report on the Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services revealed that three-quarters of the earth’s land-based environment has been significantly altered by human actions.

Are rubies undermining Maasai culture? New WOLTS photo essay published!

17 September 2019

Our latest WOLTS publication is a fascinating photo essay from one of our pilot research communities, Mundarara, in Tanzania. The piece by Jim Grabham, titled “Are rubies undermining Maasai culture”, shares insights gleaned from in-depth interviews with two participants in a one-year training programme on gender, land and mining that has been developed and carried out by the HakiMadini and Mokoro WOLTS project team in Tanzania.

Amazon countries sign forest pact, promising to coordinate disaster response

06 September 2019

LETICIA, Colombia (Reuters) - Seven Amazonian countries on Friday signed a pact to protect the world’s largest tropical forest via disaster response coordination and satellite monitoring, amid recent fires that torched thousands of square miles of the jungle.

The presidents of Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, the vice-president of Suriname and the natural resource minister of Guyana attended the one-day summit in the jungle city of Leticia in southern Colombia.

Kenya evicts forest dwellers to save country's 'water tower'

05 September 2019

Human rights groups say about 60,000 settlers are being targeted, in the latest effort to halt the destruction of what is referred to as Kenya's key water tower


NAIROBI - Thousands of people are being removed from Kenya's largest forest, a senior official said on Thursday, in a controversial move aimed at saving the country's most important "water tower", which has been decimated by decades of corruption.


Joan Carling: Indigenous rights defender says Amazon fires show need for global solidarity

04 September 2019

n September 2019, the UN Environment Programme will honour Champions of the Earth, outstanding environmental leaders from the public and private sectors, and from civil society who have had a transformative positive impact on the environment. Here we meet previous winners of this prestigious award and find out how they still are making a difference in their communities and across the globe.


‘Giving land tenure rights to commons can prevent degradation’

03 September 2019

Around 80 million hectare of common lands in India provide livelihood to around 350 million people, finds studies conducted by a Gujarat-based non-profit

Common lands like pasture lands or prayer sites should not be treated as wastelands and must be provided land tenurial security, according to Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), a Gujarat based non-profit. The organisation raised this matter at the ongoing United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification's Conference of Parties (CoP) 14 on September 2, 2019.

Eviction of two million Indian forest dwellers stirs up a storm

02 September 2019

Their claims were rejected, raising concerns whether due process was followed


The recent Amazon wildfires brought everyone to a choking standstill as the world’s largest tropical rainforest and the lungs of our planet were going up in flames. Environmentalists blamed the far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who pushed for development of the protected land reserves and is against environmental fines. Speculation is rife that the fires started with a deliberate attempt by loggers and farmers to clear the forests.


Let the World’s Future Not Turn into Ashes

28 August 2019

MANILA, Aug 28 2019 (IPS) - With the record rate blaze in the Amazon that struck Indigenous communities, the world is confronted by a humanitarian crisis in the midst of an ever-worsening political-economic condition.

The International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) joins the international chorus of condemnation and call for immediate actions to put an end to the unfolding crisis that jeopardizes the lives of Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon and planet’s survival.

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