At COP27, the FSC Indigenous Foundation, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB), the Association for Research and Integral Development (AIDER), and Ecosphere+ convened experts at an event on November 16 in the UNFCCC Capacity Building Hub, Integrating Indigenous Peoples into the NDC process through capacity development. This event highlighted Indigenous communities effectively engaging in the carbon market and shared lessons, strategies, and recommendations to drive Indigenous capacity development.
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are part of the strategy to achieve the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to commit to actions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
Indigenous Peoples are critical for climate mitigation, as their territories are sources of global solutions to climate change and are vital to conserving and restoring ecosystems. Indigenous Peoples and local communities are custodians of 20% of forest carbon in tropical and subtropical countries, which is equivalent to 218 billion tons of carbon, or more than 30 times the total global energy emissions in 2017.
It is critical to scale up and better integrate Indigenous Peoples in NDC processes with governments through capacity development.
Case studies: Indigenous participation in the NDCs and lessons for capacity development
A panel with Indigenous leaders and partner organizations shared initiatives in Costa Rica and Peru related to the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism that are part of the NDCs.