Partners on the frontlines: Forest communities lead the way to resilience and building back better

Join RECOFTC and The Forests Dialogue at the XV World Forestry Congress as we visualize indigenous and local communities as equal partners and meaningful leaders in overcoming the complex challenges we face today. Representatives of forest communities from around the world will present solutions and an agenda for change developed through a participative process. These solutions promote ‘one health’ and address the threats of climate change, deforestation and degradation, loss of biodiversity, poverty, inequality and exclusion, food insecurity, and conflict.

Want to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement? Prevent pandemics and build back better after COVID-19? Achieve equitable and sustainable development? Conserve landscapes and biodiversity? End conflict over land, water and resources? Achieve gender equality and inclusion? Increase resilience to coming environmental, health and economic shocks? Build a green economy?

Indigenous and local communities that live in and beside forests around the world can show us the way. Research shows that rural communities with community forests are faring better than other communities during the pandemic; that their forests are managed better than those managed by governments or non-governmental organizations; that their forests store significantly more carbon and biodiversity; and that they have deep knowledge about the ecosystems they depend on and ways to live sustainably.

In fact, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are the world’s most effective stewards of nature. They also own, manage or occupy land containing more than 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. In our quest to achieve global goals and address the climate crisis, hunger and injustice, we must work with them. This session proposes that we visualize indigenous and local communities as equal partners and meaningful leaders in overcoming the complex challenges we face today.

Representatives of forest communities from around the world will present solutions and an agenda for change developed through a participative process facilitated by RECOFTC and its partners. These solutions address the threats of climate change, deforestation and degradation, loss of biodiversity, poverty, inequality and exclusion, food insecurity, conflict and promote ‘one health.’ The session is supported by case studies, research and stories from Africa, Asia and the Americas. Through this session, participants will learn how the participatory process underlying community forestry is a solution for building back better for a more resilient future.

Introduction

• David Ganz, Executive Director at RECOFTC

Moderator

• Milagre Nuvunga, Executive Director at MICAIA Foundation 

Panel

• Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet, Founder and President at African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF)
• Minnie Degawan, Director of Indigenous and Traditional Peoples Program at Conservation International
• Fernanda Rodrigues, Executive Secretary of Dialogo Florestal (The Brazilian Forests Dialogue)
• Dora Cudjoe, Senior Operations Officer at The World Bank