Study: REDD+ doesn’t work without Indigenous peoples, but fails to engage them

Study: REDD+ doesn’t work without Indigenous peoples, but fails to engage them


The United Nations’ framework for reducing emissions by protecting forests in less-industrialized countries, known as REDD+, isn’t doing enough to prioritize Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. That’s the finding from a new study, which proposes a dozen principles for giving local and traditional communities, the long-standing stewards of those very forests, more decision-making power within REDD+. “The importance of Indigenous Peoples in the protection of the Amazon is not reflected in the design of international climate policy,” the study says. “Given their historical and ongoing struggles against extraction, guidance from Indigenous Peoples must be central to any climate justice approach for mitigating deforestation in the Amazon.” The study groups the 12 principles for improving existing climate policies into four categories: Indigenous territorial defense, Indigenous-led climate initiatives, safeguarding Indigenous peoples’ rights to strengthen existing policies, and equitable climate finance and benefit sharing to enable these types of improvements. The paper’s authors say these recommendations could apply both to the design of new climate programs and to a “justice-oriented reimagining of REDD+.” Cattle raising in the Amazon rainforest. Environmentalists claim that climate policies like REDD+ should prioritize addressing the key drivers of deforestation, such as large-scale cattle ranching, rather than focusing on small-scale land clearing by local communities. Image © Bruno Kelly/Greenpeace. “We do not advocate for the continued use of REDD+ as it is currently conceived, [but] we recognize that it will likely stay around,” they write. “It [is] imperative to present an alternative and to suggest ways to improve current…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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