I care deeply for this environment, and as a project manager with Carbon Tanzania, I work to prevent degradation and biodiversity loss in Yaeda Valley. We work with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) to protect the land on which they depend. Together, we work to strengthen land tenure and to avoid deforestation through the implementation of community-led land use plans but still find ourselves in need of international support. As such, we are highly invested in the outcomes of COP15, the U.N.’s biodiversity conference. It presents an opportunity to move land rights up the agenda, not just here in Tanzania, but across the globe.
For Climate Change Mitigation, Protecting Forests Is Key
Removing roughly one quarter of all the CO2 emitted each year, our forests are key for climate mitigation. As well as powerful, natural carbon sinks, forests also play critical roles in regulating the water cycle and stabilizing carbon-rich topsoil to prevent erosion. In these ways, forests quietly maintain the conditions needed for life on Earth. However, in Tanzania, we currently lose between 1 and 2 percent of our forests every year. This destruction accounts for approximately 70 percent of our country’s national emissions and boldly highlights the urgent need for forest conservation. For 2030 goals to remain within reach, one gigaton of emissions reductions must be achieved yearly from forests by 2025.
Protection Is Only Effective With Indigenous Engagement
Yes, forests are key for climate mitigation, but IPLCs across the globe also depend directly on these ecosystems to sustain their daily livelihoods. Only they know the true, sacred value of forests and continue to uphold ancient, natural traditions.
Long before international organizations came to support them, IPLCs were safeguarding forests. In the Mbulu and Karatu districts of northern Tanzania, the Hadza people have been sustainably managing their ancestral rangelands for generations. Never taking more than needed, the Hadza instinctively understand that the environment does not exist to be overexploited. Going forward, it is imperative to work with those who have unique knowledge of the environments we must protect.
IPLCs Urgently Need Land Rights
Secure land rights are foundational if we are to protect forests and an Indigenous way of life. Although nearly 21 percent of all land on Earth is under the stewardship of IPLCs, ownership is not secured. Addressing this inequality is no simple task; there are global forces at play which make the delivery of these rights a challenge.
For one, the global population is growing. Hitting 8 billion this year, land is at a premium on our populous planet. This is certainly true in Tanzania. Over the last 50 years, the Hadza have lost almost 90 percent of their rangelands to new agriculturalists arriving in the region. As such, to secure communal lands, greater funding is undeniably required.
The Carbon Finance Solution
At COP26, some celebrated as $1.7 billion was pledged to support the land rights and conservation initiatives of IPLCs. Yet, many of us remained skeptical; there is a long history of undelivered funding. It is therefore extremely disappointing, if unsurprising, that only 7 percent of this pledge has so far been realized. Furthermore, of the $270 million spent annually on Indigenous forest management initiatives, only a slim 17 percent actually makes it to activities involving a named IPLC organization.
In light of these poor results, we must highlight another financing route: the voluntary carbon market (VCM). Through the sale of high-quality carbon credits, finance can be transferred from heavy emitters in the Global North to communities on the frontline of the climate crisis. For the VCM, this means investing in Indigenous organizations and projects and equitably remunerating them for their conservation efforts.
Proven models enable up to 60 percent of profits to be delivered directly to IPLCs to support long-term conservation and to maintain land-boundaries once secured. However, carbon finance is relatively new; many IPLCs are unaware of the additional benefits it can bring for health provision, education and employment. Therefore, international actors should meet with IPLCs, not only to understand the situation on the ground, but also to spread awareness of positive impacts.
Right now stakeholders spanning governments to NGOs are calling on COP15 to discuss the land rights of IPLCs. Projects, such as the one in my home in the Yaeda Valley, prove that powerful nature-based climate solutions exist; they just need a greater level of international support. We call on COP15 to deliver.
Isack Bryson is a project manager at Carbon Tanzania.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
