It is estimated that 50% of land on the planet is held, used or managed collectively by Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, farmers, pastoralists, fisher folks and forest keepers - yet only 10% of it is formally acknowledged. Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities are recognised for their success in protecting their lands and territories, and manage around 300 billion metric tons of carbon. Without tenure security, they are prevented from protecting their land against land use change, driven primarily by agriculture and resource extraction.
At the same time, secure land rights are key to avoid potential negative consequences that may arise from land-based actions for climate mitigation in the context of energy transition or carbon markets that may lead to forced evictions and/or the absence of Free, Prior and Informed Consent - as well as to form the basis for any related benefit sharing negotiations.
For the reasons above, it is crucial that communities living on and from the land are capable of engaging the policy spaces opened up by the UNFCCC national implementation processes such as National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and of using these as instruments to secure their land rights.
This session will brought together stakeholder representatives, policy experts and CSOs to learn from technical experts and share experiences about how national policy spaces generated by the implementation of the UNFCCC can be seized to advance tenure security and land rights.