Editor’s Pick: Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

This blog is the second part in an Editor’s Pick Series highlighting USAID’s work with Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The first part of the series featured Climatelinks blogs that reflect these efforts, and this second part features resources and projects.

There is clear evidence that lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities are highly effective at sequestering carbon and promoting adaptation through land and water management. Yet these groups are often excluded from climate decision-making processes. USAID aims to change this by placing increased emphasis on working with Indigenous Peoples and local communities. USAID supports partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to lead climate actions in ways that respect traditional values and practices while uplifting the effective leadership of these groups. In this blog, explore some of the ways USAID programs and activities work with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to address climate change. 

The USAID Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples offers guidance for robust engagement and partners with Indigenous Peoples to help USAID’s programs align with these communities’ own priorities. Indigenous Peoples are stewards of a wide range of critical ecosystems, and of much of the earth’s biological diversity. Their systems of traditional knowledge and resource management can make significant contributions to their own countries, as well as to broader global health, agriculture, and food security. Traditional knowledge is also valuable for finding effective strategies for responding to the challenges of global climate adaptation. 

Amazon Indigenous Rights and Resources contributes to the Amazon Regional Environment Program’s goal to reduce negative impacts of large-scale infrastructure projects, extractive activities, and climate change on Amazon forest and water resources. The program aims to incorporate the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples into public and private sector development planning to balance human welfare and environmental conservation.

Effective Engagement with Indigenous Peoples: USAID Sustainable Landscapes Sector Guidance Document is based on desk research about sustainable landscape-related issues among Indigenous Peoples, international standards, and USAID program experiences. It is also based on interviews with USAID development professionals. This guidance complements and is informed by the programming guidance within the USAID Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PRO-IP) and is one part of USAID's collection of sector-specific guidance documents on engagement with Indigenous Peoples.

Video Resources: USAID Paramos and Forests Activity highlights local Colombian climate efforts, ranging from Indigenous Peoples' involvement in the carbon market to ecotourism as an economic alternative to logging. USAID’s Paramos and Forests activity helps the Government of Colombia reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), and improves local actors’ capacities to measure, report, and verify (MRV) emissions. The activity also creates sustainable income revenue streams for participating Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities and encourages the adoption of sustainable land uses and businesses that protect high mountain ecosystems. 

Vietnam Local Works for Environmental Health Study explores the process of engaging partners to make water works more locally owned and sustainable and presents recommendations to be adapted into current activities and new designs. The USAID-funded Local Works for Environmental Health activity, implemented by the Institute of Population, Health, and Development, has been working since 2018 to address environmental health challenges in local communities in Ha Nam and Thanh Hoa provinces through empowered local capacity and strengthened partnerships among local organizations.