Climate Change, Land Rights and Community Led Development (Global People’s Assembly)

22 September: On the road to COP27- nexus issues between the security of land tenure and climate change vulnerability for indigenous communities, Philip Kilonzo, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA). 

Overview.

The global call to Action Against Poverty convened sessions from 20^th-22^nd September around various issues affecting the globe. Varying from SDGs, Community-Led Development, PACJA as a co-organizer/co-convener of these meetings was on board leading a discussion on the nexus issues between the security of land tenure and climate change vulnerability for indigenous communities, led by the Policy, Advocacy and Communication Lead Philip Kilonzo- at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (See picture).

He outlined that the Security of land tenure has been at the heart of vulnerability for indigenous communities. These communities all over live in all-over live-in the system is largely communal in character and with lesser safeguards which refer to the security of entitlement. Some of the lands they live in are ecotone, areas of high biodiversity, wetlands, and arid and -arid lands with strong climate nexus.  One of the overarching characteristics of these communal lands (inhabited by indigenous people) is diverse resources – water, forests, minerals and of course land. This has in turn then motivated triple grabs of land that belongs to these communities.

The land belonging to these communities also suffers the threat of extraction of natural resources. Extraction of resources in these lands has been a driver of climate injustices globally – There has been observation in spikes in air pollution; water sources pollution; land dereliction and degradation.

Due to the insecure tenure systems of communal land these communities have been pushed to the periphery over time – losing land, migratory corridors, grazing lands, fishing sites and this has shrunk resources available to these communities and prompted greater vulnerabilities for these communities to climate change.

Livelihoods of indigenous people have been for the longest time been premised on the abundance of these resources and their rotational/ nomadic nature of the use of these resources allowing nature-based solutions to afford time for recuperation and sustained access. Unsecure tenure rights have limited investments in building resilient sustainable livelihood systems in these communities

• A number of climate response actions continue to work intermittently in the current context to worsen tenure rights of these communities, worsen climate implications: The strive to make cities and urban cities resilient in the supply of water, continue to prompt proliferation of water abstracting projects that continue to allienate communities from their water resources, investments in renewables – including large solar plants, wind, and geothermal plants – additional displacements, REDD Plus programmes – which were not well governed have resulted in land grabs dispossessing communities of their land for REDD+ and related programmes, Global conservation programmes, not conceived under the Post 2020 CBD framework will further worsen tenure rights for local communities, mega dams as now proposed, climate security implications –immigrations, conflicts, destruction of fragile ecosystems whose tenure rights are unsecured, transitions minerals – ambudance in lands inhabited by indigenous communities.

Climate responses could be a solution!

• Implementation of Locally Led Adaptation Action principles (devolve decisions + address structural inequalities)
• Nature based solutions for addressing climate change. 

And now in the buildup to COP27:

• Indigenous people as a critical block of mobilization
• Centrality of our work in building critical conciousness of these groups on climate justice issues, and how their right to land, natural resources sit in climate discourse
• Platforms for communities for amplifying their issues and telling their stories – campaigns such as the Climate Justice Torch and their role in heightening ressponse measures
• Influencing the just transition discusions to centre on and vest control of the transition process and its benefits to local communities
• Influencing accessible climate funding for communities in the frontline of climate crisis
• Having their minority status count!