In the wake of COP30 in Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, many of our partners are celebrating hard-earned recognition for the solutions they know are effective at slowing climate change.
More than 35 governments and philanthropic donors, including the Skoll Foundation, announced a five-year, $1.8 billion commitment to strengthen land tenure for Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and local communities (IPs, ADs, and LCs).
The renewed Forest Tenure Funders Pledge builds upon the landmark $1.7 billion commitment launched at COP26 to secure Indigenous land tenure. This renewal is another major step forward in recognizing IP, ADs, and LCs as essential stewards of their lands and a critical component of the solution to climate change. While Indigenous Peoples make up only 6–7 percent of the global population, they have a disproportionately large impact on slowing climate change simply by continuing the traditional land management practices they have honed over millennia.
This commitment signals an increasing emphasis on removing the barriers that limit their impact.
Worldwide, IPs already manage—formally or informally—an enormous portion of the planet’s climate-critical forests and up to 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. These forests store vast amounts of carbon, enable incredible biodiversity, and are home to traditional cultures, languages, and ways of life.
Indigenous Peoples have protected and managed these lands for millennia, limiting deforestation, sustaining critical ecosystems, and sequestering the carbon they store. Research now confirms what communities have long understood: when Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities have government-backed, secure land rights combined with meaningful decision-making power over their natural resources, forests have better climate outcomes, including lower deforestation rates, than those managed through conventional conservation approaches.
Despite their proven stewardship, only half of Indigenous-managed lands are formally recognized as belonging to these Peoples, leaving many territories vulnerable to deforestation from industrial logging, large-scale agriculture, and increasingly, mining for the minerals required to power the transition to electric fuels.
The renewed Forest Tenure Funders Pledge continues the commitment and collaboration between IPs, ADs, and LCs; governments; and philanthropies to change that reality.
By backing the land rights and stewardship of communities who have safeguarded forests for generations, the renewed Pledge helps to protect more climate-critical ecosystems and, in so doing, moves us closer to a sustainable world of peace and prosperity for all.
