Path to Scale has identified two measurable targets that reflect the current state of legal progress on recognizing collective tenure rights, opportunities for change, and costs of financing those opportunities. The targets focus on specific outcomes needed to enable communities to benefit from and actively manage and conserve rural lands and forests, and the degree of international support needed for this agenda.
Support the recognition of tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples to an additional 150 million hectares of tropical forest by 2025, and at least 400 million additional hectares of tropical forest by 2030, raising the total area of forests owned by or designated for local peoples in low and middle income countries from the current 30% to over 50%.
Mobilize $10 billion of new funding dedicated to advancing Target 1 by 2030 in tropical forest countries. This would put at least one half of all tropical forests under the control of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities; and in doing so, dramatically increasing their potential for sustained protection secure over 125 tCO2e and avoid at least forecasted 1.099 (range 0.463 – 4.456) GtCO2e of forest carbon emissions.
Reaching these targets would directly benefit a minimum of 200 million people (of whom more than half are women), avoid globally significant amounts of forest carbon emissions, protect environmental defenders, and reduce and reverse the rollback of rights, climate, and biodiversity protections.
In November 2021, at CoP26 in Glasgow, Path to Scale made significant headway on its targets by mobilizing $1.7 billion in climate funding commitments toward Indigenous Peoples and local communities (read about it here). Incremental targets and priorities would be set based on future commitments and updated on a regular basis. A tenure tracking system designed by RRI, which is the coordinating body for Path to Scale, has already developed robust systems to track progress on Target 1, and will integrate and mobilize baseline and future data to track Target 2. Using the latest technology in remote sensing, these systems can also track the impact of securing tenure rights on forest cover, stored carbon and carbon loss.