How recognizing Indigenous land protects forests and the climate

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signed decrees recognising four Indigenous territories totalling 2.45 million hectares as part of efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Coming near the end of the two-week U.N. COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belem, the move aims to ensure Indigenous territories are legally protected from invasive farming, mining and logging.

Instituto Socioambiental, an Indigenous rights advocacy group, said Brazil had also made progress on the administrative processes needed to recognise another 4.5 million hectares, which already provides some legal protection and government support.

"This COP must enter history as one that will recognise Indigenous peoples as central to fight climate emergency, and Brazil will give an example!" Brazil's Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara wrote on Instagram.

This follows a separate commitment by Brazil to recognise and strengthen land rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other local communities over 63 million hectares across the South American nation.

So far, 15 countries have signed the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment launched at COP30 to recognise land rights across 80 million hectares where Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other local communities live in tropical forests by 2030.

It also states that land rights should be strengthened in another 80 million hectares of land that are already under formal control of communities.

Eleven tropical forest nations have signed the commitment and another four Western states have signed as supporters.

How can recognizing communal land protect nature?

Formally recognising Indigenous and local communities' rights to the territory where they live is an effective tool to stop deforestation, which often results in public land being claimed by private interests, often for farming, activists say.

In addition to preventing forest loss and degradation, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples tend to produce food using more sustainable methods than in mainstream agriculture.

They also monitor their territory and protect it from trespassers such as illegal miners and loggers, often reporting environmental crimes to the authorities.

In Ecuador, for example, court rulings in recent years have given the Cofan Indigenous group the right to order intruders off their land and to confiscate their equipment.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, the government is obliged to remove any invaders from fully recognised Indigenous land.

How much land is controlled by Indigenous and local communities?

Analysis published in 2023 by the Rights And Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition, found groups gained legal recognition to more than 100 million hectares (about 247 million acres) of land across at least 39 nations between 2015 and 2020.

By then, at least 11.4% of land was owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities as of 2020, considering 73 nations covering over 85% of global land area. This share was up from 10.6% in 2015.

Under such ownership, communities have the power to manage the territory as they see fit, prevent outsiders from entering their land and demand compensation if their rights are violated.

Separately, on at least 7.1% of the land analysed by RRI, such communities have been granted limited designation rights - which are less concrete, as they are not indefinitely guaranteed and do not include compensation in cases of violations.

Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, and Mexico collectively account for nearly 62% of all lands designated for, or owned by, these communities globally, despite making up only a third of the total area of land analysed by RRI.

Sub-Saharan Africa saw the biggest increase in legal recognition of community land rights of any region between 2015 and 2020, mainly due to gains in Kenya and Liberia, RRI said.

What is the area that could be recognized as communal land?

Implementing existing laws in 20 countries could increase the total area of land legally owned by, or designated for, communities by more than 260 million hectares, more than twice the amount recognised between 2015 and 2020, according to RRI.

The report found that in 49 countries with available data, 1.375 billion hectares of land, an area the size of Antarctica, had been claimed by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities, but was not yet legally recognised by governments.

"To recognise a territory means to give forests the freedom to keep living along with those who belong to them: Indigenous peoples and local communities … animals and plants," Chief Ninawa, head of Brazil's Amazon Huni Kuin people, told Context

(Reporting by Andre Cabette Fabio; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Jon Hemming.)