Sustaining Green Territories of Life

The ongoing deforestation of tropical forests poses a serious threat to the climate, biodiversity and human rights. Despite promises and commitments to protect the forest and ensure the rights of indigenous peoples, both deforestation and violations of indigenous peoples’ rights are intensifying. Ensuring the protection of indigenous lands is especially important as they make up a large part of the rainforest and biodiversity in the Amazon. Areas managed by indigenous peoples and local communities are better protected against logging than other forests. However, there are underlying causes that include defective legal protections for indigenous land rights and absence of effective legal recognition and resourcing for the exercise of self-government and territorial rights.

In this project, The Forest Peoples Program seeks to promote governance reforms to secure indigenous people’s rights and protect rainforests in the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon.

The project is supported with SEK 3 290 000

What does the project deliver?

It provides advocacy, legal and technical assistance to empower Indigenous Amazonian peoples and their organizations in Peru and Colombia to undertake targeted national and global advocacy to assert their rights and protect their rainforest territories and communities from commodity-driven deforestation and rights abuse.

Why do we support the project?

Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are two of the greatest challenges of our time. The deforestation of the Amazon risks having devastating consequences both for the wildlife and indigenous peoples of the region. The project contributes to the reduction of these negative consequences.