Blog Posts: indigenous people

Despite its private status, hutan rakyat could significantly contribute to social forestry’s overarching goals.

In the working visit of the President of the Republic of Indonesia to Palembang in late November 2018, the President and his ministers stressed the importance of the government's social forestry program as a way to improve welfare and social justice without forgetting environmental conservation efforts.

With an integrated map, determining land for social forestry can be done more accurately and indicative maps of social forestry areas can also be updated.

Scientists estimate that by managing the world's land more sustainably, such as by protecting forests and investing in reforestation, we could achieve up to 37 percent of emissions reductions necessary to limit the global rise in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius by 2030.

A new study from 15 countries, including Indonesia, titled “The scramble for land rights” by the World Resources Institute, highlights significant disparities between companies and indigenous communities in terms of land ownership and the ease of acquiring secure land tenure to support their livelihood.

The Santa Clara de Uchunya community has lived in a remote section of the Peruvian Amazon for generations, relying on the forest for hunting, fishing and natural resources. But in 2014, someone started cutting down large sections of their ancestral lands. They've been struggling for their land rights ever since.

Eager to extract natural resources, governments and corporations are increasingly snatching land from indigenous groups. But these communities aren't standing by idly—they're mapping territory borders, protesting and even litigating to protect their land and resources.

A new sugarcane plantation forced 600 Cambodian families off their land. Many lost all their belongings, and parents, unable to farm and afford school fees, sent their children to work in Thailand. It's a shocking story, but one that's all too familiar for the 2.5 billion people living on indigenous and community lands.

Indonesia's indigenous communities claim more than 40 million hectares of land, but they only manage a tiny fraction. Granting control back to communities could improve environmental outcomes, as it has in Gajah Bertalut, a community in Riau.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities are some of the best environmental stewards. Five maps illustrate just how critical indigenous and community lands are to the planet.