Indigenous knowledge and languages crucial in the fight against climate change

A coalition of Malaysian and international NGOs has released a memorandum in response to the recent TPAC report on the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS). The organizations express serious concerns about the independence, quality, and credibility of the assessment carried out by the Timber Procurement Assessment Committee (TPAC).

Historically, the Sengwer community has lived in harmony with their environment, relying on forest resources for sustenance  and integrating conservation into their daily lives. However, recent government policies aimed at forest protection have limited their access to these ancestral lands. Although these regulations intend to protect the environment, they often disregard the traditional conservation practices of indigenous communities like the Sengwer, who have been natural stewards of these lands for generations.  Faced with these restrictions, the Segerger Women’s Conservation Group intensified their conservation efforts, viewing it as both a cultural duty and a means to safeguard their heritage. 

The pilot of Dare to Trust, facilitated by NTFP-EP, was implemented in two grassroots women’s organisations in the Philippines and Cambodia. The Dare to Trust project provided them with the independence to utilize the resources they have and thus handed to them the agency for more grounded and better judgment. By giving more liberty to the communities we are moving them away from bureaucratic processes and power structures, and towards more empowered decision making capabilities. 

A wave of international recognition is shedding light on the valuable role that indigenous communities play in looking after our planet's most vital ecosystems. Last night in Vancouver, two of our partners won a grant in the Inclusive GEF Assembly Challenge Program: the ILED Network and AIDER (Peru). Our colleague Eva Schmitz was present to receive the prize on behalf of the ILED Network.

At this year's UN Climate Conference COP27, Bhavya George, Climate Change coordinator of our partner organisation Keystone Foundation won one of the Gender Just Climate Solutions awards. Her project "Women Barefoot Ecologists", which also is supported by the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), won in the category "Transformational Solutions".

Today is International Day of Forests. An ever more important day, as the amount of forest and forested area's on this globe is shrinking at a fast pace. One the main causes is our ever increasing demand for products such as soy and palm oil from area's that have been deforested for their cultivation. The current proposed EU-deforestation law to prevent this, is not strict enough and does not include the protection of other crucial natural areas such as grasslands, savannas and swamps, as well as the human rights of the millions of people living in these area's. During these past few weeks we therefore participated in the campaign #Together4Forests, calling on citizens to send a letter to their own responsible ministers. The campaign paid off: almost 54,000 letters were sent to European ministers across the European Union, demanding a strict forest law that guarantees the import of only deforestation-free products in Europe.

To celebrate this International Day of Forests, we would like to emphasise the great value of forests and other natural areas, directly or indirectly, for the livelihoods of at least 2 billion people. Below, we selected some examples that show how, throughout the world, local communities use many different ways to collect and produce food and other natural products in a sustainable way, while protecting and restoring the forests and forested area's they are so dependent upon.

About one in every six people, particularly women, directly rely on forests for their lives and livelihoods, especially for food. This shows how important non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and forests are to ensure community resilience. Not only as a source of food, water and income, but also because of their cultural and spiritual meaning.

As a source of food, water and income, and for their cultural and spiritual meaning, forests and Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) help ensure community resilience. Both ENDS has a long history of collaboration with partners such as the Non-Timber Forest Products Exchange Programme (NTFP-EP) and Keystone Foundation, which support forest communities in promoting the NTFP concept for forest conservation and livelihood enhancement.

Civil society organisations from around the world condemn the statements by representatives of palm oil companies during a meeting with the Malaysian government. In this meeting, the company representatives called critical NGOs "toxic entities" and asked the Malaysian government to not let these NGOs into the country. Both ENDS' partners have published a reaction in which they defend their right "to expose the realities we face in their communities about the impacts of the palm oil sector".