Indigenous Community Land Management Systems
Indigenous people live on over 50% of the world’s land, yet only 10% of it is under their legal ownership. This ownership is more important to all of us than we may think. In times of climate change, community and management indigenous people often practice bring us a number of benefits.
Community land often comes to protecting NaturalEcosystems and helping achieve SDGs; it caters for food, water, fuelwood, medicinal plants and other critical resources; it also enhances its inhabitants’ safety and cultural identity.
For example, the indigenous community in Ratankari region, Cambodia, manages community land in two ways: common shared property such as forests, pastures and wetlands used by all members and household property for homesteads and family farms. Currently, the indigenous land management is under a constant threat of illegal logging and land acquisitions for agro-industry, which threatens land rights and natural capital of the region. Indigenous communities have learned to mobilize and protect their traditional land management system. Let’s visit the Equador for a moment here. The Ecuadorian government wanted to drill oil from 7 million acres of land in the Amazon. However, their efforts were stopped by 16 Waorani communities of Pastaza. The community sued the government for inadequate consultation process before starting sale in an international oil auction back in 2012. National and international law supported community land rights, which won a historic court case.
Wildfires
As per the IPCC, cities emit 70% of global CO2 and existing rainforests absorb 1/3rd of them.
But wildfires in #rainforests are threatening this ecosystem. Recently, the Amazon rainforest was burning at an alarming rate: over 76,000 fires, a number of which related illegal deforestation to clear land for crops and cattle.
The same fire was once used for the very opposite purposes of protecting the forest from deforestation. And we can today learn from how indigenous communities managed it as a tool. Small-scale rotational forest farming was surveyed and timely managed. The fire was also used to trap and hunt animals and for gathering resources such as palm leaves or honey by clearing the area. In other words, a fire was intimately connected to livelihoods, culture, history and beliefs.
Such indigenous knowledge has a wider impact. Evidence from several satellite studies indicates that indigenous lands have less deforestation and habitat conversion creating more biodiversity and storing more carbon. Quite an opposite conclusion from how interest groups interpret the reasons for today’s uncontrollable fires across forests.
Can strengthening indigenous and local community land rights while supporting Traditional Fire Management be a solution to mitigate wildfires today?