Forests — especially the old-growth, tropical forests that many indigenous communities depend on — are an essential line of defence in the climate crisis. Yet the world lost a Belgium-sized swath of these forests last year. As governments, businesses and media give greater attention to tropical deforestation, what many forget is that these forests are not often uninhabited wildernesses. Providing legal rights to forest communities and indigenous peoples, and investing in their livelihoods, is essential to conserving and restoring forests.

A new report from the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) — Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use — sets out a path to a better, fairer future for the world’s rural population. The research shows that securing forest communities’ and indigenous peoples’ rights and livelihoods is a fundamental prerequisite of this effort. Three case studies from Food and Land Use Coalition partner countries (including the case of India’s Narmada District above) illustrate the importance of protecting and securing people’s rights to their land.

This is a particularly urgent and pressing challenge: 80% of the world’s extreme poor live in rural areas, often without adequate infrastructure or equitable access to land and natural resources. Half of the world’s land is held communally by indigenous peoples and other rural communities (some 2.5 billion people in all). However, these groups only legally own about 10% of the world’s land. Indigenous leaders who try to protect their land are at great threat around the world, with 164 environmental defenders killed in 2018 by armed gangs and criminals associated with various interests, including extractive industries. Forest and indigenous communities, as well as farmers and other rural people, are working against the odds to respond to a changing climate, sustain their livelihoods and ensure a bright and prosperous future for themselves and their families.

Farmers in West Kalimantan, Indonesia pack and weigh sun-dried illipe nuts as part of a social enterprise that conserves forests while providing income to local communities. Photo by Panos Pictures/Food and Land Use Coalition.

For those living in or alongside the world’s remaining tropical forests, it is critically important to ensure economically viable, sustainable livelihoods that provide alternatives to deforestation. In the biodiverse forests of Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, a recently established social enterprise, Forest Wise, sells wild illipe nut butter to markets in Jakarta and overseas. Wild bunch illipe nuts (highly prized for their nutritional properties) are harvested from the endangered Shorea Stenoptera tree, which only grows in the forests of Borneo. Income generated by the illipe nuts is enabling local communities to invest in the restoration and sustainable management of their lands, using techniques like agroforestry, a type of farming that integrates trees and crops.

A similar story can be found in Urabá — a state of banana plantations, cattle ranches, biodiverse forests and indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations — in northwest Colombia on the border with Panamá. Members of the Embera village of Chigorodó, as well as the Indigenous Reserves of Yaberaradó and Polines, are protecting their forests and sustaining a living through their traditional practices. These communities use the forests’ diverse plants for medicine, and to develop arts and crafts. The creation of local markets for these products is enabling these communities to protect their rights and consolidate their presence on the land, at a time of great pressure on Colombia’s indigenous peoples.

Two members of Colombia’s indigenous Embera community walk in the rainforest, where they’re preserving traditions and developing sustainable livelihoods. Photo by Panos Pictures/Food and Land Use Coalition.