By Chris Lang The European Union has scrapped its US$35 million Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme in Kenya. The project had been suspended since January 2018, after a Kenya Forest Service guard shot and killed Robert Kirotich, an Indigenous Sengwer man. The shooting took place during a raid in Embobut…
Tag: Indigenous Peoples

Kenya’s Community Land Action Now: “A win-win solution for forests, human rights and the EU WaTER Project exists – please grasp it!”
By Chris Lang In January 2018, the European Union suspended funding to its Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme in Kenya. The EU announced the suspension of the US$35 million project the day after a Kenya Forest Service guard shot and killed Robert Kirotich, an Indigenous Sengwer man, during a raid…

The Green Climate Fund Board discussion about Colombia’s REDD+ funding proposal: Concerns about environmental integrity, “could have been funded by the GCF outside of the REDD+ pilot programme”, reservations about GCF’s REDD+ scorecard, Colombia is not a high forest low deforestation country, and any emissions reductions already reversed. The Board approved funding anyway
By Chris Lang In August 2020, the Green Climate Fund approved US$28.2 million for “results-based” funding to Colombia, for the period 2015 to 2016. In the presentation of the proposed REDD payments, the Green Climate Fund Secretariat acknowledged that deforestation in Colombia, particularly in the Amazon, had increased since the Peace Agreement in 2016.

A critical revision of REDD from an intersectional gender perspective
By Chris Lang “As a thoroughly socially and gender just approach, sustainable development requires addressing the socio-economic, political and ecological inequalities and power asymmetries through an intersectional gender lens. Intersectional feminist perspectives enable to see that indigenous and other marginalized rural women play a crucial role in engaging with climate change, reducing deforestation and sustainable…

Coronavirus notes #6: International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples sees more threats than ever for Indigenous Peoples
By Chris Lang 9 August is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The date marks the first meeting of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations that took place in 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland. Every year since 1994, 9 August has been the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. This year’s theme…