San
Francisco (AFP) - Proven masters at sustainably managing forests that protect
against global warming, indigenous peoples got a place at the table, and some
cash, at an international climate summit in San Francisco this week.
New
"guiding principles" for collaboration endorsed by three dozen mostly
tropical provinces and states across nine countries bolster indigenous rights
to land, self-governance and finance earmarked for safeguarding forests.
"The
partnership between governments and indigenous leaders marks a paradigm shift
for tribal and indigenous engagement," Mary Nichols, chair of the
California Air Resources Board, said at the Global Climate Action Summit.
Up to now,
native communities in the forests of Latin America, Africa and Asia have seen
their ancestral lands degraded and destroyed -- sometimes with the blessing of
local or national governments -- by extraction industries (oil, gold) and big
agriculture (soy, palm oil, cattle).
Even UN-led
efforts to involve indigenous peoples in preventing deforestation have unfolded
"in a context of rights abuses, displacement and dispossession, threats
and harassment over territories, and the repression and assassination of
environmental activists by state and private forces," the non-profit
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) reported last year.
At least
207 environmental campaigners, half from indigenous tribes in tropical forests,
were murdered in 2017, according to watchdog group Global Witness.
Deforestation
-- responsible for about a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions -- intensifies
global warming in two ways.
Losing a
wooded area the size of Greece each year not only reduces Earth's capacity to
absorb carbon dioxide, it releases huge amounts of the planet-warming gas into
the atmosphere.
The
principles were negotiated within the decade-old Governors' Climate and Forests
Task Force, made up of state and provincial leaders from eight tropical
countries and the governors of California, Illinois and Catalonia.
Keeping
carbon in the trees
"Today
we recognize the essential role of local communities and indigenous peoples for
the conservation of forest territories and the development of effective climate
change strategies," said Jorge Aristoteles Sandoval Diaz, governor of
Jalisco, Mexico.
Tribal
leaders, who helped forge the new charter, said it would make a difference.
"We
live in, depend upon, and manage our forests -- and have done so for
centuries," said Francisca Arara, leader of the Arara indigenous people in
Acre, Brazil.
"These
principals provide us with a stronger platform for negotiating equal ground
with governments."
Experts
described the charter as "an important step forward," but said more
was needed.
"Recognizing
the rights is really key to keeping the carbon in the trees and the soil,"
said Andy White, Coordinator of the Washington-based Rights and Resources
Initiative, a research group.
"But
the real question is how much money they put behind implementing these
commitments."
Tropical
forests provide livelihoods and anchor the cultural identities of tens of
millions of indigenous people.
Research
has shown that stewardship by local communities significantly slows the pace of
deforestation.
"Thirty-seven
percent of what is needed to stay below two degrees Celsius" -- the
cornerstone goal of the 196-nation Paris Agreement -- "can be provided by
land," said Andrew Steer, WRI President and CEO of the World Resources
Institute in Washington DC.
"But
only three percent of the public funding for mitigation goes to land and forest
issues. That needs to change."
In a
parallel announcement, nine foundations pledged nearly half-a-billion dollars
over the next five years to boost indigenous management of carbon-rich forests.
"Solving
climate change requires that forests, and land in general, be managed
well," Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, told AFP. "Indigenous
peoples are the key to unlocking that solution."
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