Under Threat, Land Has a Critical Role to Play in Addressing Climate Crisis

“Land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods.” With this statement the IPCC begins the Summary for Policy Makers of its new Special Report on Climate Change and Land. In the report, the IPCC sends a clear message that we need urgent action to combat the climate crisis. Only by achieving “compatibility between specific land management practices and socio-economic conditions, including land tenure and gender,” will we be able to adequately intervene to protect the environment and our future.

Land is fundamental to every aspect of human life. It feeds us and provides the foundation for all our society. Climate change, however, is threatening land’s vital role in supporting humanity. Further, not only are land and its systems adversely impacted by climate change, but also their misuse strongly contributes to it.

On August 8, 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest Special Report, this time focusing on the relationship between climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. When read alongside the IPCC’s previous Special Report on 1.5°C, this new Special Report on Climate Change and Land depicts an emergency situation, in which climate change is compromising not just the environment but our human rights.

According to the IPCC, climate, rights, and biodiversity are intersecting crises and addressing them requires a holistic approach. This includes not only protecting the environment but also strengthening land tenure (read: how property rights are allocated, including how land is used, controlled, and transferred and who has access) and ensuring the participation of all stakeholders and the people most vulnerable to climate change, particularly women, indigenous peoples, and other local and vulnerable communities, in all policy making processes.

What threat are we facing?

Human activities transform the natural landscape, and this land use change causes between 20 and 30% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As such, it’s a significant contributor to climate change. In addition to ending our use of fossil fuels, sustainable land management is critical for lowering emissions, which is necessary to achieve the 1.5°C goal set by the Paris Agreement.

In addition, the Report confirms that climate change will have serious consequences for the poorest and most food-insecure communities, affecting all four pillars of food security: availability of food, access to food, utilization (aka “ the way the body makes the most of various nutrients in the food”), and stability (the permanence of the other three pillars over time). Over 820 million people are already undernourished, and this number is only going to increase — particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia – unless we radically change our approach to agriculture, food systems, and land rights.

Women and indigenous communities are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change because they are often those living in the most precarious conditions, as well as in the areas most affected. They are on the frontlines of sea-level rise, flooding, and desertification, as well as those with the lowest salaries and worst working conditions.

Further, women and indigenous communities are often responsible for land management. However, as stated in the report, many sustainable land practices cannot be adopted today due to insecure and discriminatory property rights, which too often exclude women and local and indigenous communities. Land mitigation measures may indeed lead to the removal of vulnerable peoples from their land, which will reinforce existing inequalities and social exclusions.

According to the IPCC, “differential vulnerability to climate change is related to inequality in rights-based resource access, established through formal and informal tenure systems.” Thus, addressing climate change also means addressing tenure systems to ensure tenure security (i.e., protection against eviction) and land rights, particularly those of indigenous peoples and women. This requires enforcing land titling and recognition programs, such as those that uphold indigenous and communal tenure. This will guarantee these communities the necessary control over their own land and all the ecosystems under their protection, which is critical as they are the best stewards.

The importance of participation

According to the IPCC, the lack of tenure security and lack of adequate knowledge that result when stakeholders and local communities are not involved in decisionmaking processes exacerbate the negative impacts of climate change and inequitable access to land resources.

Women and indigenous communities should not be seen just as victims of climate change. They are, as reaffirmed by the IPCC, also a strong part of the solution. Indigenous lands hold 80% of the world’s biodiversity, thus making them essential for combatting both the depletion of biodiversity and the climate crisis.

Traditional knowledge held by indigenous peoples and local communities is key to fighting climate change. Knowledge and understanding of their food systems, in particular, are essential for combating the food crisis. Their longstanding practices based on diversified crops and alternative agricultural systems have proven to be better ways to ensure food security in the face of a changing climate. Their interdependence with natural ecosystems can also help with conservation and forest restoration, both of which are necessary to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Similarly, especially in rural and developing countries, “women often grow most of the crops for domestic consumption and are primarily responsible for storing, processing and preparing food,” says the IPCC in Chapter 5 of the report. As such, women are at the center of the food production chain. As countries consider changes in approaches to food production, women must be involved in the decision-making processes at all levels.

As the IPCC states, land-management-based response options “can contribute to eradicating poverty and eliminating hunger, while promoting good health and wellbeing, clean water and sanitation, climate action, and life on land.” But while public participation is essential to achieving such outcomes, significant barriers remain. According to the IPCC, “participation in decision-making and politics, division of labour, resource access and control, and knowledge and skills are some of the barriers to adaptation.”

“Adaptation strategies are linked to environmental and cultural contexts at the regional and local levels” and possess a “gendered” dimension, according to the IPCC. Only by involving women, indigenous peoples, vulnerable communities, and other stakeholders in the selection, evaluation, implementation, and monitoring of policy instruments related to land management can we truly be aware of the needs and most effective means of combating biodiversity depletion and climate change.

A clear message

What emerges from the Special Report on Climate Change and Land is a clear message: We’re failing to adequately consider the risks of climate change to the environment and to humankind, and in particular, how land use changes contribute to this crisis. But hope lies in understanding the critical role that ecosystem integrity, protection of biodiversity, and participation of indigenous peoples, women, and local communities can play in addressing climate change. According to the IPCC, everything in our approach to land has to change in order to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.

As the IPCC puts it, “Prompt action on these challenges could deliver immediate benefits in many countries and reduce the vulnerability of millions of people to desertification, degradation and food insecurity.” As it did with the Special Report on 1.5°C, the IPCC continues to demonstrate that the science is clear, and that incorporating a human-rights-based approach to mitigation and adaptation is essential to most effectively fight climate change.

By Virginia Raffaeli, Geneva-based intern

Originally posted on August 8, 2019