Global conservation efforts have a major influence on land and resource tenure and use, with wide range of positive and negative interactions with indigenous and community land rights in different contexts. Increasingly, conservation agencies and advocates recognize the need to consistently respect as well as to strengthen the land and resource rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as part of conservation strategies. However,
assessments of the relationship between community land rights and conservation policy and practice at the country level show that much remains to be done to implement this growing recognition in specific national contexts.
This strategy session will focus on national contexts in which there are key opportunities and policy openings to advance community land rights as they relate to conservation, encouraging interactive and action-oriented dialogue among indigenous and community leaders, conservation practitioners, civil society advocates and other experts on these issues. A panel of speakers engaged in advancing land rights and conservation reforms in key national contexts will present on their current opportunities and challenges, strategies, blockages, and proposed ways forward.
Through participant discussions, the session will identify and develop the concrete actions and broader collaborations needed to advance these national-level reforms. The session will conclude with action planning on next steps, including consideration of how international initiatives and policy levers can help promote and scale up conservation engagement in national efforts to secure indigenous and community land rights.
Co-Chairs:
Ms. Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Mr. Gonzalo Oviedo, Senior Adviser on Social Policy, IUCN
Ms. Jenny Springer, Consultant, Rights and Resources Initiative
Speakers:
Ms. Nonette Royo, Executive Director, Samdhana Institute
Mr. Tushar Dash, Program Officer, Vasundhara
Mr. Helcio Marcelo de Souza, Indigenous Strategy Coordinator, The Nature Conservancy
Organizers: Rights and Resources Initiative, International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Indigenous Peoples’ International Center for Policy Research and Education (Tebtebba).
*This session will be held in English and Spanish only.
