To address the climate crisis and reach sustainable development goals, Indigenous, community, and Afro-descendant land rights must be secure. While communities claim and manage roughly half of the world’s lands—including much of the remaining forestland and biodiversity hotspots—only 10 percent of these tenure agreements are legally secure. Closing this gap in land recognition would produce transformational impact on the climate crisis and create a multiplying effect by guarding human rights and the rights of women.

Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) is a global coalition of more than 150 rightsholder organizations and their allies dedicated to advancing the land and resource rights of local peoples—informed and driven by Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities themselves. It leverages that coalition to amplify the voices of local peoples and proactively engage governments, multilateral institutions, and private sector actors to adopt institutional and market reforms that support the realization of land rights. The coalition links projects and organizations to global-level discourse and decision making that shape policy.

“We are the largest network of rights holders in the world and have successfully managed projects and grants in 30 plus countries since 2005,” said Solange Bandiaky-Badji, Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Group, in a recent presentation to the Skoll Foundation. “We work to ensure that new laws and policies recognize Indigenous Peoples and local communities—particularly the women within them—as the legal owners of their land and recognize that they are the ones to manage those lands to protect biodiversity and forest preservation. They are the leaders on the frontline.”

Read the full article about land rights by James Pippim at Skoll Foundation.