Rainforest dwellers demand more say in climate change efforts
At the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, indigenous leaders from seven countries demanded more say in how tropical forests should be managed to fight climate change. The meeting included calls for free, prior and informed consent to be recognised.
This article from AFP includes an interesting quotation from Tony James, President of the Amerindian Peoples Association in Guyana:
“Conservationists want to prevent us from using our forest lands for economic purposes, and businesses have government concessions to extract ore, water and biofuel from lands that have been ours for generations. We have been hearing more and more about the carbon trade, but indigenous people are not being included in the discussions. We want to know: who will own the carbon, and what will be the impact on us?”
Rainforest dwellers demand more say in climate change efforts
BARCELONA (AFP)
Indigenous leaders in five Amazonian nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia on Wednesday demanded a larger say on how best to manage tropical forests to fight climate change.
More than a billion poor people who depend on forest ecosystems risk economic and cultural devastation if efforts favored by rich nations to reduce greenhouse gases fail to respect their rights and needs, they said at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
Full article available here.