Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas, and Slowing Climate Change

Taylor H Ricketts,Andrea Cattaneo,Annie Petsonk,Marc Conte,Ken Creighton,Lawrence Linden,Anthony Anderson,Daniel Nepstad,Claudio Maretti,Paulo Moutinho,Alexander Pfaff,Britaldo Soares-Filho,Roger Ullman,Ray Victurine,Gustavo A B Da Fonseca,Doug Boucher

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000331

Abstract

Recent climate talks in Copenhagen reaffirmed the crucial role of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas represents an effective, practical, and immediate REDD strategy that addresses both biodiversity and climate crises at once.

Highlights

The recent climate summit in Copenhagen failed to produce a legally binding treaty, the importance of forest conservation in mitigating climate change was a rare point of agreement between developed and developing countries and is emphasized in the resulting Copenhagen Accord [4,5]
While Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas (ILPAs) typically reduce rates of deforestation compared to surrounding areas [14,15,16,17,18], deforestation often continues within them, especially inside those that lack sufficient funding, The Perspective section provides experts with a forum to comment on topical or controversial issues of broad interest
We focus on the Amazon basin given its importance for global biodiversity, its enormous carbon stocks, and its advanced network of indigenous lands and other protected areas [16,21]

Summary

The Policy Playing Field

Several policy alternatives for REDD have been under negotiation, both in Copenhagen and elsewhere. A second approach is compliance markets, in which nations or regulated entities must reduce their emissions or buy offsets from others This approach will take more time, but negotiations are under way to develop or expand compliance markets for REDD within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the European Union, and the United States [6,8,9,23]. Both of these frameworks—for the near term, at least—will likely emphasize reductions in carbon emissions compared against national baselines [6,7,24]. It will be up to each nation to decide how to achieve these reductions (e.g., protecting forests, redirecting drivers of deforestation, and other land-based strategies), and how to allocate any payments received

The Role for ILPAs

Findings

Taking Action