Securing Indigenous & Community Managed Forests
Secure land and resource rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities are linked to reduced deforestation, carbon emissions, conflict, land grabs, and increased biodiversity, and better development and environmental outcomes. Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities manage 22% of the total carbon in forests and 50% of the world’s lands, but only have legal government recognition of 10% of these lands. And while the planet warms and the sea level rises, governments, corporations, and private investors are grabbing millions of hectares of “idle” forest land, causing involuntary displacement, the erosion of ecosystems, and the destruction of tropical forests, our planet’s most vital carbon sinks.
In Forests, with Cadasta’s Technology, Tools, and Services
INDIGENOUS GROUPS AND COMMUNITIES can map their community forest boundaries and defend their claims to resources such as land, water, trees, and spiritual sites.
NGOs can document, analyze, and monitor environmental changes, such as deforestation, and support communities and indigenous groups to defend their rights.
GOVERNMENTS can use the maps and data collected on Cadasta’s tools to formalize community and indigenous land and forest claims.
Cadasta’s Work in Forests
In the Indian state of Odisha, Cadasta partnered with the local nonprofit, PRADAN to map, document, and advocate for community forest rights. PRADAN uses Cadasta’s tools to map and demarcate agreed-upon forest boundaries to develop a system of protection for the community forest areas. This data allows local communities to apply for government recognition of rights to forest reserves through the Recognition of Forest Rights Act of 2006 and the Community Forest Resource Rights.
In Kenya, Cadasta partnered with the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program to document the rights of the Ogiek Peoples to the Mau Forest. The access to Cadasta’s training and tools enabled the community to document their claims and protect the forest from encroachment.
Cadasta has partnered with India-based NGO Arch Vahini to leverage 3D data and specialized analysis tools to assess and document the placement and effectiveness of earthworks, designed to increase production and control erosion of farm plots. The resulting analysis and documentation helps demonstrate a farmer’s commitment to investing in the land to strengthen their claims for formal land tenure.
The India based NGO Waatavaran is leveraging the training and tools offered by Cadasta to more efficiently map and collect community spatial and household data to secure rights for Scheduled Caste and Tribal Communities living in the forests of Maharashtra State, India. Using Cadasta’s platform—with its accessible satellite imagery, mobile tools, and digital maps—the project is documenting and securing rights for 2,000 households, representing approximately 12,000 citizens.
The Forest Office in Dhankuta is using Cadasta to create a dashboard to monitor and review forest indicators and attributes in near real-time, such as average annual cut, demand, total growing stock distribution, major species, subspecies, forest type, gender, population, and geospatial distribution of community forests. This has resulted in a digital (as opposed to paper-based) dashboard that allows community members to use remote tools to collect and update forest use and rights data. More than 2,850 hectares of forest and 4,630 people have been documented to date.
