Under the umbrella of the Land Dialogues series, the last  webinar of this year’s series “Navigating Loss and Damage : A Path to Justice for Indigenous Peoples” took place on December 5th, 2024. The webinar drew in a little over 250  participants. The series is organized by a consortium of organizations, including the Land Portal Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Tenure Facility and this particular webinar was  

The global transition to renewable energy depends on critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel, but their extraction raises significant challenges for land rights, environmental sustainability, and equitable benefit sharing. In this webinar, experts from Zambia, Uganda, Indonesia, and the global governance field explored what it takes to align mineral extraction with principles of justice and equity.

On November 27, 2024, the Global Donor Working Group on Land convened a pivotal session as part of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development Annual General Assembly (AGA). Under the theme “Redefining and Enhancing the Quality of Finance for Sustainable Development,” the event focused on optimizing Official Development Assistance (ODA) to address the needs and rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs). The session spotlighted practical approaches to improving the inclusivity, efficiency, and impact of development finance amidst intensifying global crises.

In 2022, countries reached a historic agreement to halt biodiversity loss by conserving at least 30% of land and water by 2030. This marked a critical step toward protecting the world's precious remaining species and ecosystems. But that's not all: The Global Biodiversity Framework, as it's known, also explicitly calls on countries to recognize and uphold Indigenous Peoples and local communities' rights in their conservation strategies.

In the villages surrounding SudCam's vast rubber plantation in Southern Cameroon, the contrast between initial promises and current reality is striking. More than a decade after the establishment of this Halcyon Agri Corporation Limited subsidiary, local communities face a radical transformation of their environment and way of life.

On September 23, 2024, a powerful hybrid event titled "From Commitment to Action: Enabling Direct Funding for Indigenous Peoples in Multilateral Climate and Biodiversity Initiatives" was hosted at the Ford Foundation headquarters in New York City as part of Climate Week. The event gathered Indigenous leaders, activists, multilateral fund representatives, and climate finance experts to address a critical question: Can multilateral mechanisms, with their sprawling bureaucracy, meet the urgent need for direct, fit-for-purpose funding for Indigenous Peoples on the frontlines of climate and biodiversity challenges?

The Land Dialogues nurture a community of trust with Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendent peoples by producing webinars that bring unlikely voices and perspectives together.

With USAID support, an Afro-Colombian community received a collective land title, guaranteeing ownership of their traditional lands.

Defending the rights of nature represents a big step forward in the fight against climate change.

The webinar “Pathways to Customary Land & Forest Rights in the Mekong” took place on July 2nd, 2024. This was the second webinar in the series ‘State of Land in the Mekong region’ which aims to highlight the evolving environment of land governance in this dynamic region, including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam. The webinar attracted 240 participants and featured experts from the Mekong region. The webinar was organized by the Land Portal Foundation and the Mekong Region Land Governance and drew on findings from research and activities conducted by the Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) Project and its partners on the recognition and formalization of customary tenure rights across the Mekong region.

Two years after international donors pledged $1.7 billion to Indigenous Peoples at COP26, a recognition of their crucial role in protecting biodiversity and carbon capture, there has been good progress in preparing the systems needed for the money to be disbursed.