By 2030 the partnership aims to mobilize at least $20 billion per year in long-term, private corporate contractual financial flows to community-based forest conservation projects.
GOALS AND COMMITMENTS
photo: Filip Agoo
THE PROBLEM AND OUR SOLUTION
As the world’s forest stewards and community members, Indigenous Peoples, traditional owners, and local communities (IPLC) hold the skills and knowledge to protect and manage forests, helping to meet Paris Agreement targets. However, only 1% of current climate finance has directly reached these communities.
Indigenous peoples have the best record of success in protecting tropical forests. In the Amazon, deforestation rates in indigenous territories are less than 15% compared to a rate of 76% in territories not inhabited by indigenous people (Finer et al. 2021). But precisely because some indigenous territories have avoided deforestation and are not considered to be under immediate threat (despite clear and accelerating pressures), they are unable to access climate finance through many programs as they are currently designed.
Additionally, Indigenous and other forest communities face accelerating pressures as they protect their territories, including fires to clear forests for agriculture, logging, mining, land grabbing, and other illegal activities. They frequently experience violence or repression when they resist. These communities’ rights and their leadership in keeping their forests standing need to be globally recognized.
Without the willing and active participation of IPLCs, most deforestation drivers cannot be effectively addressed, and most efforts to stop global deforestation will fail.
Peoples Forests Partnership aims to improve pathways for investment, and create equitable, accessible mechanisms for forest communities to engage with climate and conservation finance.
Climate and carbon finance to forest communities must recognize and fund forest communities as equal partners, critical solution providers, and key participants in efforts to shape a global economy that values nature and biodiversity.
Voluntary climate commitments are a powerful tool for partnering with forest communities to stabilize forest loss and protect biodiversity, while supporting their cultures. Repeated independent third-party audits, based on science-based standards and developed through open multi-stakeholder processes, confirm the positive impacts that community-based, voluntary climate finance projects have generated for both forest communities and global climate and biodiversity goals.
Community-based climate finance partnerships can make meaningful contributions to national emissions reductions goals for forest nations, and be a key part of global emissions targets set under the Paris Agreement. Through an established process called “nesting,” community-based forest conservation projects can contribute to national and subnational programs, and attract additional finance from voluntary corporate demand. Community-based climate finance projects also have a well-documented history of innovation and delivering benefits directly to forest communities.
OUR GOALS
A key goal of the partnership is to advance new, alternative financing mechanisms that can fill this gap and recognize forest community stewardship and sacrifices to protect their lands from deforestation.
The collective reach of our founding members will be harnessed to rapidly grow the number and scale of community-based forest conservation economies within relevant subnational and national programs to eliminate tropical deforestation by 2030 and meet global climate commitments.
We will create innovative flows of direct climate finance that recognize and invest in communities protecting their lands and support their self-determination and long-term capacity to do so.
Specific goals include:
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Safeguard the rights and grow bioeconomies that sustain the livelihoods of over 50 million people in forest communities.
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Safeguard irrecoverable carbon stocks and reduce CO 2 emissions from deforestation each year by at least 2 billion tonnes.
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Protect 200 million hectares of forests with high carbon and low deforestation from outside threats
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Protect at least 500 million hectares of threatened tropical forest and their biodiversity globally.
photo: Roun Ry
OUR COMMITMENTS
Our commitment is to support Indigenous Peoples', traditional owners' and local communities’ calls to recognize their rights, stewardship and active participation in forest conservation and to create equitable, accessible mechanisms for them to engage with climate and conservation finance.
We aim to create and harness innovative flows of climate finance that 1) recognize and invest in communities who protect and are striving to protect their lands and 2) support their long-term capacity to do so through territorial governance that will fill a gap in current climate finance efforts. Our vision is to create a platform and resource to support and scale this.
Our collective expertise is already allowing us to build the infrastructure and relationships that connect consenting Indigenous Peoples, Traditional Owners and Local Communities (IPLC) to the resources they need to participate directly and effectively in long-term climate finance. Facilitating members of the Peoples Forests Partnership have already secured financing for a portfolio of community-based forest conservation projects that will deploy $2 billion in private investment and stop at least 200 million tonnes of deforestation emissions over the next ten years.
We are committed to providing and collaborating on knowledge share processes for concrete guidance on credible resources available to IPLCs and other stakeholders, such as environmental market standards, criteria for direct engagement, best practices for FPIC, project development and safeguard processes with IPLCs, and diverse sources of funding from our private and public sector members. This will include both performance and non-performance-based funding to IPLCs to support territorial governance, direct benefits to communities, and other finance options that align with IPLC values.
We actively seek additional voluntary commitments and action from private sector entities and other actors who share this vision and align with the Partnership's formally established Principles.