Effective Engagement with Indigenous Peoples: USAID Sustainable Landscapes Sector Guidance Document

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) designed this guidance document to provide a practical tool for USAID missions and operating units (OUs) to more effectively engage and partner with Indigenous Peoples in sustainable landscapes (SL) program activities. Consideration of Indigenous Peoples’ own development priorities and facilitating their participation in program design and implementation through well-structured communication, consultation, and engagement strategies helps foster local solutions to local development challenges as envisioned in the Journey to Self-Reliance. By effectively engaging Indigenous Peoples in SL activity design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, OUs can advance USAID’s priority areas while accounting for Indigenous Peoples’ needs, capacities and interests. This engagement can mitigate adverse impacts on indigenous communities, avoid conflicts that can delay, diminish or derail benefits derived from forest, land-use, and water management efforts, Natural Resource Management (NRM), and/or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction activities, and lead to the sustainable management of Indigenous Peoples' lands, and land and resource tenure security.

This sector guidance document is based on desktop research about SL 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.