A large number of countries recognize the role of forests in carbon sequestration and committed in their NDCs to protect forests, reduce deforestation rates, and restore forestlands. Few NDCs, however, make any specific commitments to how their forests will be protected or restored on degraded land. It is still unclear if governments will protect forests by expanding the protected estate, improving the management of existing national parks, helping communities safeguard the forests on their lands, or by taking other measures.
The research for this report was designed to help governments make these decisions. It examines the
environmental and economic arguments for one specific approach to protecting forests—securing
indigenous forestlands.
The research included original matching analysis to determine the effect of secure tenure on deforestation rates in indigenous lands in the Amazon forest in Bolivia, Brazil, and Colombia. Indigenous land covers at least 149 million hectares or almost 24 percent of the Amazon forest in these three countries.
The analysis finds that the annual deforestation rates in the tenure-secure indigenous forestlands are significantly lower than on other similar lands in all three countries, suggesting that securing tenure contributes to reducing deforestation in these areas.