Target 15: Ecosystem restoration and resilience

• The lands, territories and forests of IPLCs play a vital role in maintaining global carbon stocks, in building ecosystem resilience, and in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Yet they continue to be destroyed and degraded by external interventions.
• IPLCs around the world are working to safeguard and restore their lands, in many cases based on territorial defence and on their traditional knowledge and customary systems of sustainable resource use.
• However, IPLC contributions require much greater recognition and support, and safeguarding measures need to be improved to reduce the impacts of climate change on them and to enable them to upscale their contributions to this target.

“The Ts’msyen Nation in Northern British Columbia is currently experiencing the effects of climate change and industrial development within our region. Rain patterns are shifting, drought is occurring, ocean temperatures are rising, and industry threatens our way of life and the coastal ecosystem every single day. Support is required from all sectors and government to safeguard our way of life and to help Indigenous peoples and communities mobilize to advance the clean-energy, net-zero-carbon sustainable future that is desperately needed to keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C.”

— Braden Etzerza, Metlakatla First Nation

IPLCs around the world are already experiencing serious effects of climate change, especially those who depend directly on the local environment for their daily needs; this Target 15 is, therefore, of particular concern to them. They are in a good position to contribute to the maintenance and restoration of ecosystems because of their intimate relationship with their lands and resources,¹ but harmful subsidies, inappropriate development policies, and continued lack of recognition of customary land rights in many countries means that they are still struggling to maintain forests and ecosystems against large-scale environmental destruction by external actors.² Indigenous and local knowledge is particularly valuable in ecological restoration and resilience building, but it continues to be undervalued, and is still often neglected in ecological restoration programmes.³ Overall, IPLC contributions and concerns related to Target 15 are still under-recognised, on the ground and in relevant policy forums.⁴

“I want to be a good ancestor. Indigenous Peoples’ commitments to climate action ensure that we are thinking of the seven generations to come.”⁵

— Chief Howard Thompson, Haudenosaunee

IPLCs play a crucial role in maintaining the health of ecosystems on their lands, and their actions contribute significantly to global ecosystem resilience. Globally, at least 22 per cent (218 gigatons) of all carbon in tropical and sub-tropical forests (including above- and below-ground) is stored in the collective forestlands of IPLCs, and at least a third of this carbon lies in areas where IPLC land tenure is not formally recognised.⁶ Community lands commonly experience lower rates of deforestation and forest carbon emissions than other areas, and maintain higher levels of biodiversity, resulting in more resilient landscapes.⁷ This is due in part to the greater sustainability of customary natural resource management systems based on traditional knowledge, such as those for enriching soil and managing fire⁸, in comparison to more intensive forms of use.

As fires swept through many parts of Australia at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, releasing at least 409,700,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide⁹—more than half of the country’s carbon emissions for the entire year of 2018—various scientists and policymakers called for a revitalisation of Aboriginal fire management systems¹⁰ to rebuild ecosystem resilience and avoid similar carbon-releasing disasters in the future. By comparison, the 2019 Brazilian Amazon fires emitted 392,000,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. The Australian bushfires burned more than six million hectares, including national park forests, with smoke reaching as far as Argentina¹¹; the fires devastated many communities and killed an estimated 480 million animals.¹²

“States must understand that we are the guardians of these territories, of our mother Earth, just as the Amazon forest and other ecosystems in which we live are the hope of the planet. We indigenous women and youths are on the front line defending the rights of indigenous peoples, and now we are facing climate change in our territories and we can provide solutions to this global concern and bring it to all the spaces for political advocacy.”

— Rayanna Maximo Franca, indigenous youth of the Baré people, Indigenous Youth Network of Brazil

Communities are also working actively to restore and reforest degraded environments. Three different examples are featured in this chapter: in Colombia, indigenous peoples are planting trees, cleaning up water sources, and improving waste management (Box 34); in Antigua and Barbuda, the Barnes Hill community has been restoring an abandoned community reservoir and the surrounding environment (Box 35); in Galicia, in Spain (Box 36), a legal mechanism based on traditional systems of communal land tenure has enabled the Froxán community and others to regain control of their lands and work to restore the degraded environment.

• IPLCs should continue to implement and strengthen community-based approaches and activities for socio-ecological resilience and restoration.
• Governments and relevant actors should increase recognition and support for local community actions for ecosystem protection, restoration and resilience-building, including agroforestry, agroecology and traditional fire management systems.
• Governments and relevant actors should fully recognise the significance and role of indigenous and local knowledge in ecological restoration.
• Governments and donor agencies should upscale climate funds for IPLC actions related to resilience, restoration and carbon storage, and enhance mechanisms to make funds easily available, on an equitable basis.

• Rights and Resources Initiative et al. (2018) ‘A global baseline of carbon storage in collective lands’. Rights and Resources Initiative: Washington D.C. Available at: https://rightsandresources.org/en/publication/globalcarbonbaseline2018/
• Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group for Sustainable Development (2019) Inclusion, equality, and empowerment to achieve sustainable development: Realities of indigenous peoples. Baguio City and San Francisco: Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group for Sustainable Development. Available at: https://www.indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/all-resources/ipmg-position-papers-and-publications/ipmg-reports/global-reports/124-inclusion-equality-and-empowerment-to-achieve-sustainable-development-realities-of-indigenous-peoples/file
• Uprety, Y., Asselin, H., Bergeron, Y., Doyon, F. and Boucher, J-F. (2012) ‘Contribution of traditional knowledge to ecological restoration: practices and applications’, Ecoscience 19, pp. 225–37.
• Wehi, P.M. and Lord, J.M. (2017) ‘Importance of including cultural practices in ecological restoration’, Conservation Biology 31(5), pp. 1109–18.