Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas, and Slowing Climate Change

Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas, and Slowing Climate Change

Recent climate talks in Copenhagen reaffirmed the crucial role of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas represents an effective, practical, and immediate REDD strategy that addresses both biodiversity and climate crises at once.

Protected areas' role in climate-change mitigation.

Globally, 15.5 million km(2) of land are currently identified as protected areas, which provide society with many ecosystem services including climate-change mitigation. Combining a global database of protected areas, a reconstruction of global land-use history, and a global biogeochemistry model, we estimate that protected areas currently sequester 0.5 Pg C annually, which is about one fifth o...

Bandsar agriculture: indigenous runoff-harvesting &climate change resilience in Iranian dry lands

Iranians have a very long history of water harvesting to address water scarcity and the consequences of frequent droughts. Among these strategies, Bandsar is a wide spread indigenous practice, which has been utilized in the central and the southern part of Khorasan province (the northeast Iran). Bandsar in Persian means a series of consecutive bands, berms, levees, or dikes. A Bandsar consists ...

Managing protected areas under climate change: challenges and priorities.

The implementation of adaptation actions in local conservation management is a new and complex task with multiple facets, influenced by factors differing from site to site. A transdisciplinary perspective is therefore required to identify and implement effective solutions. To address this, the International Conference on Managing Protected Areas under Climate Change brought together internation...

Climate Change and Species Range Dynamics in Protected Areas