No matter how different our lives look in far-apart places, climate change affects us all. A new report by the World Resources Institute and the Rights and Resources Initiative offers compelling evidence of this, showing clearly that one of the best ways to slow global warming is to give traditional communities the right to manage the forests where they have lived for generations. It is by far the most comprehensive assessment to date, drawing on 130 previous studies, as well as recent satellite data. Most media attention on climate change focuses on energy and fossil fuels. But any realistic strategy to curb climate change must also address deforestation. The world’s forests store more carbon than the atmosphere—one recent estimate suggests that, by stopping deforestation and then reforesting, we could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent. The report, “Securing Rights, Combatting Climate Change,” contrasts Brazil’s recent success protecting forests with Indonesia’s dismal failure. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is only a fraction of what it was 10 years ago, in part because traditional communities now have secure rights to about one quarter of the forest. This has allowed Brazil to reduce its emissions by 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide—more than three times the amount emitted by all the cars in the United States in a year. yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/indigenous-land-management-effective-combating-climate-change
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 11:00:01 +0000
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