051 - Ensuring funding to secure rights and secure ecologies

051 - Ensuring funding to secure rights and secure ecologies

Latest version in this language: Version for electronic vote | Published on: 02 Oct 2021

RECOGNISING that many indigenous peoples and local communities seek to self-govern, manage, care for, and sustainably use their territories and areas, including commons and sacred sites, and in some cases have internationally recognised rights to maintain and develop such management, use and care;

RECALLING IUCN’s affirmation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and further affirmation of indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ collective rights and responsibilities to land, water and resources in their traditional territories, including through Resolution 5.094 Respecting, recognizing and supporting Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (Jeju, 2012);

ALSO RECALLING Resolution 6.072 Enabling the Whakatane Mechanism to contribute to conservation through securing communities’ rights (Hawai‘i, 2016), which remains extremely under-resourced;

UNDERSTANDING that indigenous peoples’ organisations and authorities and local community initiatives that contribute to conservation outcomes receive a small share of conservation funding globally, despite the significant conservation outcomes being achieved under indigenous and community governance, management and use;

CONSIDERING that previous World Conservation Congresses have passed numerous Resolutions recognising the role of indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation; and

EMPHASISING that we are in a global climate, biodiversity and ecological emergency in which it is important for indigenous peoples and local communities to manage, use, conserve and sustain their territories, and that this is particularly effective where security of tenure is recognised;

The IUCN World Conservation Congress, at its session in Marseille, France:

1. CALLS ON the Director General to work with State and non-State Members, Commissions, Regional Offices and the Secretariat to:

a. recognise the importance of funding for indigenous peoples and local communities to govern, manage, care for and sustainably use their territories and areas;

b. facilitate dialogue between non-governmental organisations, indigenous peoples’ organisations and government membership on how to mobilise additional resources; and

c. undertake resource mobilisation with donors to finance this shift to securing collective tenure and indigenous rights, in accordance with relevant national legislation;

2. REQUESTS Commissions, in particular the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), to contribute to knowledge generation, fund-raising and technical support to ensure donor funding is redirected to support communities to sustain and be sustained by their lands;

3. CALLS ON IUCN, states and Members to support activities for communities to sustain and be sustained by their lands through self-determined effective rights-based conservation;

4. REQUESTS Members to promote financial cooperation to safeguard the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, which depend on nature and which are shared territorially mainly with protected areas; and

5. URGES states and donors to ensure that their legal and funding regimes secure ecologies through securing IPLCs tenure rights, in accordance with relevant national legislation.

This proposed motion directly addresses the disproportionately low levels of conservation funding that are directed towards the affirmation of land and tenure rights for indigenous peoples and local communities, where community and indigenous management has evidenced significant positive conservation outcomes. The motion identifies previously inadequate funding flows as an underlying cause for the failure to-date to secure widespread and consistent realisation of indigenous and other collective tenures as part of the answer to conservation imperatives. It calls for quantifiable commitments and monitoring of resources to support a shift towards adequate funding of indigenous and community-led initiatives, or initiatives supporting the realisation of tenure security.
  • Asociación SOTZ`IL [Guatemala]
  • Asociación Ak'Tenamit [Guatemala]
  • Forest Peoples Programme [United Kingdom]
  • Synchronicity Earth [United Kingdom]

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