Seats at the Table: A High-Level Dialogue of Local Communities for Land and People Day - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

Hello.
Good morning.
Please take your seats and we can initiate our activity.
Please take a headset because this event is using wait a minute that everyone can take your handset and then we will welcome our Secretary-General and welcome, Lady Jasmine.
And this session is of high level about the land people and with the focus on the local communities, and it will be moderated by my friend from the Brazilian government and I'm representative of the local community caucus and welcome our friends in this room.
Thank you very much.
Good morning.
We ask for the permission to start our activity at this moment.
We invite your Ellen to come to the table bear with us.
You are welcome.
Good morning, everyone.
On behalf of the, I'd like to thank her for age and the secretary of English to customer imperial to advance of reference.
Yeah.
They are that has been taken conditions that are basically the organization consider that essential as people of the community have to identify, to preserve the story, the identity, the auth so that they can have a regular To the power just We consider fundamental, the mechanism of anything that the areas more affected by the drought especially in the area this part c that the impact also state are very important.
Therefore, the foro for this morning to Great.
I guarantee that they have a dialogue dialogue and also the floor.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the words.
For me, it's also a great honor to moderate the session of high level and I'd like to thank the presidency of the secretary of the convention and compromise of this event.
And I'd like to welcome all the friends of the Indigenous peoples.
And today we are gathering here in representation of the local communities and I and we'd like to thank the multilateral mechanisms of the indigenous people that they are our brothers and in this process and their secretary and estimated audience, we'd like to a initiate this section with the local communities.
This is a historical moment and it's also the first time that we celebrate this day with all the different representatives from the world, and it's a great space for our different representatives, and we are from different places.
So a And some local communities have their own histories, their own characteristics, and their history and culture are different.
And the second is that we have different administrative forms about our territories.
And besides We also recognize that different parts of the communities can make contributions to our society, and we also have our own form of governance.
This permit us to identify us in this space in this space so different and it's very important fundamental for us to continue with our work with our consensus of the cop 16.
So that we can constitute the caucus of local communities and indigenous peoples.
And we are going to stay in this session as testimonies from listening to the voices of the land and also articulate with the initiatives of local communities.
And we hope that secretary I will give you the floor.
Thank you.
Good morning.
It's a pleasure to be at the high level of the indigenous people have to even 5 minutes.
Not imagine how much the negotiations now ongoing, but I wanted to be here on the Land and People's Day, not only provide support to those who are the real stewards of our land, with the knowledge with their experiences and how much land for them.
Really goes beyond what it is when we are thinking of land as only a source of food.
For you, regardless coming from different regions around the world.
It's a source of health because it provides the medicine.
It's a source of culture and heritage because this is where you learn that your traditions are really the thing that you pass from one generation to the other.
And in doing so, I believe that this is where each of you has his or her own identity.
I want to give a very simple story from the country that I come from.
I come from Egypt.
And in Egypt, we have a very nice area that is Sinai, that is facing the Red Sea.
And within this area, there is a protected area in an area that's called Tan Catherine.
And Tan Catherine for Egyptian is a place that connects all religions together.
The tribes that have been living there once told me a very interesting story.
I was there preparing for COP 27 for the climate and was trying to see how can we link climate change and biodiversity.
An old woman there told me one thing.
She told me, if you come and see how the mountains and the valley around the mountains, but you need to come when it's a full moon.
I never understood what does that mean.
I told her why would it be a full moon? She told me because this is where we give our wishes and our prayers.
And then she told me, You know what? This mountain is the only thing that is present that pampers me when I'm sad.
So when I want to cry, I want a hand that would pamper me and hug me, I will go to that place in the mountain.
For me, that was very much different because for me, I saw the mountain as a very abstract thing.
It's an abstract.
We can only climb the mountain, we can see the sunrise and the sunset.
But for her, it meant so much of different meanings.
When I was reading the key messages that my dear colleague Marcus was preparing for me, this story came to my mind and I started to understand why he wrote that land for the indigenous people go beyond the food and the income for them.
For that reason, I'm so proud that Cp 16 has given the Indigenous People's Caucus and the local community caucus.
I want to be also very frank here that the decision indicated that if we have available resources, rest assured that we have strived in every single way in a very rigid part of our resources to make all the work that we have done over the last year.
To make your meetings, prepare your TORs to convene what we are convening here.
I think this is the third meeting that I have for the indigenous people, and I would like to continue more engaging.
The important message is you have came up with the sacred and declarations, and I understand that.
I would like to see how best can we take that further into implementation.
It's always seen that the COP is about decisions, which I don't disagree on.
It's right.
It's true.
But if this COP is for implementation, which I have been saying since the start, for me, the implementation is that one, we still have a mandate from COP 16 that's for sure according to the procedures.
Two, that we have a COS that has been ready and has been widely consulted and discussed.
Three, that your presence today shows how much you believe in the subject matter that we're talking about, and my presence today at the very I would say tough time of the convention of the negotiation is a great testimony that this journey, we will not give up on it.
We will work up together.
And I promise that even from CP 17 to Cp 18, if we don't have a decision, we still have a mandate from Cp 16, and you will have serious people in the UNCCD Secretariat behind your back believe in you, we will work it out together.
Thank you all very much.
Secretary bam sisters Copano interpreter.
Welcome.
P into Mongolia, Plato, Vivenci, Tj.
Inter.
The translations are not working, so I will proceed.
Is the Mongolian translation working because she wanted to start speaking, so if that's okay.
Okay.
You can start speaking.
Machine case machine.
Into which which among the Gatt, ongoing introduce ba go ahead.
Jjraxo So let me start I would like to share the case of Bbgion Mongolian Baby region, her.
So she comes from the Garden and Amano is from Bab region of Mongolia and she's a herder and in the G region and she has been herder for four generations and lives with her husband and the child.
So she so there are eight license holders, mining license holders near the place where she lives.
So there is a national protected area So there is a white white Valley cape where W is highly protected, highly renowned natural heritage.
And they have been this has been a sacred place for centuries.
And that there is a small mountain hill which has been sacred and they prey four seasons.
They have winter camp and spring camp.
This is an average case of a herder community and the coexistence of the mining license holders and the sacred place.
What happens is that when the decision was made to issue these eight mining licenses.
And establishing the mush.
The thing is that the household never knew about how the processes continued how and what happened is that in the early 2000 the family the winter come established built the winter camp on the road investing themselves and they have according to the holder they are the holder and this is the tenure, the winter camp location is that belongs to them and They Netherlands, the land permit for the the overall story all the territories, including the mountain which is held as sacred is jeopardized and damaged.
So this has many implications.
So there are many in the Mongolia, we have many projects to mitigate the climate change impact and to mitigate the desertification.
So the mining license holder complies with the compliance requirements, but the herd household still remains neglected.
So what it indicates is that the global agenda So there is this is the clear indication of the gap and the disconnect and also lack of cooperation and lack of also failure to hear the voices of the local communities.
So through this story, we would like to deliver the message that the land protection and land restoration cannot be deemed as land.
We cannot go without protecting the rights of the indigenous communities and local communities.
And any negotiations about the any negotiations, any decisions with regard to land restoration and also the So therefore, this is a clear indication that to establish the indigenous indigenous people's caucus.
So this is a single example, and we believe that this goes the same story and this applies throughout the territory of Mongolia, not only in but also beyond Mongolia.
So therefore, I would like to highlight this very clear reason, very clear rationale to establish the indigenous caucus and this needs to be formalized.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Now, I'd like to invite our friends from Sierra to deliver a speech.
We request that you can speak within 5 minutes so that we can accommodate everyone.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I will keep in less than 5 minutes.
Good morning, everyone.
Distinguished colleague, representative of local communities, partners, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Fajonu.
I'm honored to speak today on behalf of my community, the Agripsur communities, pastal communities, and also the coastal communities from Kenya and Somalia.
I come from these communities who lives livelihoods and identities are deeply connected to the land and its natural resources.
For us, land degradation and desertification are not abstract concepts found in policy documents.
They are realities that we still experience in everyday life.
The scale of this challenge is significant.
For example, in Somalia, approximately 36% of the land is degraded.
I don't know how to pronounce that word.
That was the data from 2019, with 22.8% of the population exposed to land degradation.
Then we have Kenya whereby more than 10 billion of the population in the Northern Kenya, the semi Ari and Arid lands pastoralist, and agrpsalist also heavily affected by land degradation.
Behind these statistics are real people, families, and communities.
Paroles are confronting shrinking grazing resources because of desertification, as we are all aware, and also degraded lands.
Water scar is increasingly coming competition over natural resources.
And then we have agri pastls and farmers who are facing declining soil fertility due to unpredictable rainfall and that will lead to fall in agricultural productivity.
We have coastal communities who are struggling with degraded mangroves and fisheries and other ecosystems upon which their livelihoods depend and forest dependent people because once we talk about local communities, who are we talking about? This is the space for all of the communities that I just mentioned.
I would particularly like to highlight in Somalia, for example, it has the longest coastline in Africa, about 4,000 kilometers.
When it come to this kind of spaces, I don't hear about those communities.
How are they mitigating climate change? We need to give these kind of communities a space to come and share their perspective and also their challenges and also solutions that they have to desertification, for example, or the problems that they're facing.
Although we all appear to have different and diverse problems, we are all deeply connected by land, by water, right? And degradation is one part of landscapes that affect water, food production, biodiversity, mobility, and livelihoods.
We therefore cannot address land degradation one community at a time through isolated interventions.
We need platforms where coalist can speak alongside farmers, where agricultural communities can engage with coastal and forest dependent communities, and where all the local communities, including communities of African descent can bring their knowledge, experience, solution to the same table.
While the Olympics may be different, as I just earlier shared, our goal is the same.
Hey land, resilient communities and feature in which people can live sustainably from the natural resources that support them.
We already know the collective action works.
I'll give you an example in alist labors communities are sharing.
I previously working under community grazing committees, whereby they share the resources, agree on suitable grazing plans, protect prices on grazing reserves, and negotiate access to pasture or water during drought.
So this is a good example of how communities can coexist together.
Okay.
I We have options in the coastal communities where neighboring communities can resto manage forest together, protect our breeding grounds together, and so on.
Here we are seeing local communities that are not simply victims of land deradation.
We are the knowledge holders, stewards and solution providers.
Our traditional knowledge practices and live experience must be valued alongside science, so it must complement the science, technology, and the fb process.
With that, communities must involve not only implementing programs, but also design them, making decision allocating resources and monitoring results.
I therefore say we must also move from fragmented and inalic interventions and move to collective landscape level action, and our approaches must be recognized connections between land, water, livestock, agriculture, forests, coastal ecosystems, and even well being.
I therefore encourage these boers to remain strong and inclusive platform and local community focus where no community is left behind, where communities can influence decisions that affect them and where diversity become a source of collective strength.
Finally, I thank the UNCCD and the government of Mongolia for enabling and giving us this space.
And our community is already packed.
And as I stated, we have the knowledge and we have the solutions and we have the able to actually achieve it.
So thank you.
Thank you very much, Nu.
And now we are going to invite sir Colonel B Bv from the Forestry Association, to speak about the issue.
My name is Boston Biff.
I represent the Association of Forest and Land Users.
Also, I serve as the chairperson for the Asian Parks Association.
I'm an owner to bring the voices and practical experience of local communities from Kystan all, and also follow Central Asian region.
I grew up in a farming family in Kyrgyzstan.
Therefore, has never been the policy issue Our families land, forest, pastures, water are the foundation of our food, livelihood, c, and future.
As you may know, Kynistan is the country of mountains, the 92% just mountains.
And so it includes the family farmers, the forest users, users of course, the livestock keepers and pastures.
Women and young people also play initially an essential role in managing these resources and sustainable which is our association is supporting communities in managing forests, agricultural land parts, We also have family farmers, the small scale farmers.
Just to give you an idea in Kyrgyzstan and more or less in the whole Central Asia, the 92% of food security is based on the small scale family farmers, not in a big agricultural coorations.
So the local communities are very important for us our local communities face serious and interconnected challenges, which is the land degradation, overgrazing, soil erosion, deforestation, et cetera, et cetera.
These are not separate problems.
Our experience shows that the collective and community based management can provide practical solutions.
Forest users can jointly restore forest, plant trees, tropic mountain slopes, et cetera.
The land users and family farmers can introduce soil restoration, agri forestry, organic production.
Pasture users can develop community grazing plans, organized rotational grazing, and the seasonal movement of livestock, The countries of Central Asia share the interconnected ecosystems, rivers, mountain landscapes, the pastures and climate.
The land degradation, drought, and water scarcity do not stop at the national borders.
Therefore, we need stronger regional cooperation, including the exchange of community knowledge and practical solution.
However, the local communities cannot carry these responsibilities alone.
They need secure land and resource use rates.
We need recognition of collective and customer management system.
We need access to finance, technologies, infrastructure, and market.
Most importantly, we need meaningful participation in decision that affects our land, our water, forest, pastures, and livelihood.
Local communities are not simply beneficiaries of the development projects.
We are right holders, knowledge holders, land managers, producers, and we also investors of our own labor resources.
Am I too loud? Communities across Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia are already restoring forest, improving pastures, managing water, producing food, and adapting to climate change.
Whatever happens in the formal discussions about regional representation, these communities should not have to wait to be heard.
Meaningful participation means more than inviting us to speak in an event.
It means giving local communities the opportunity to influence policies, programs, financing decisions, and the negotiations texts themselves.
If we truly want to restore land and restore hope, we must work directly with the people who live and work on the land every day.
We're not asking others to solve everything for us.
We're asking to secure rights, appropriate resources, direct access to finance and a general seat at the table.
With these conditions, the forest users, land, pasture users, pastoralists, and especially these small farmers of Kyrgyzstan and Cural Asia can become even stronger partners in restoring our land and building a resilience future for us.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for sharing with us your experience.
Now, let's welcome our guest from Iran, my dad Salimi to compare his experience.
Today I want to talk about my understanding of the relationship and also interaction between the people, local communities and nature, and also the territories.
Through my work with local communities, I have seen how their ways of life and knowledge system have developed through the a relationship and interaction with nature and their territories.
These communities are not only knowledge holders, they are also right holders linked to their territories.
Over generations, community have learned Ben B when and where to graze, cultivate or fish, how to manage water and natural resources, when to move, and when to give ecosystems times to recover.
This knowledge is not separate from the territory.
It has developed through generation of living, observing, and adapting within specific landscape and ecosystems.
It is also connected with customary governance, culture, social relations, livelihood, and local food systems.
Together, these systems have helped communities manage and conserve natural resources and nature while supporting their livelihood, food security, and also food sovereignty.
And importantly, they work at the territorial scale.
For example, a pastoralist territory connected seasonal pastures, water resources, migration routes, and settlements.
For fishing communities, it can connected fishing grounds, coastal ecosystems, and also settlements.
These are not separate resources.
These are connected part of the one territorial system.
And this is a vi territorial integrity matter.
When communities have secure access to their territories, the knowledge and governance system can continue to function, adopt, and be passed from one generation to the next.
But when territories are fragmented, access is restrict, mobility is limited, or customary governance is weakened.
The functioning of these systems can also be affected.
Land degradation understood only as a biophysical problem.
In many cases, it is also connected to the weaking of territorial knowledge and governance system.
This is also important for how we think about solutions.
Local communities already have knowledge and practice for managing environmental changes, conserving resources, and adapting to environmental pressures.
Combining this knowledge with scientific knowledge, appropriate support and meaningful participation can strain these locally grounded solutions.
But for this to work communities need secure access to the territory their knowledge and governance systems have developed and continue to functions.
And this brings me directly to the UNCCD and LDN.
LDN means avoiding degradation where land is still functioning, reducing degradation where it's under pressure, and restoring land where degradation has already occurred.
At the territorial level, this means we should not focus only on restoration degraded land.
We also need to protect the territorial system that allow community to manage and conserve it.
My final message is simple.
For local communities, achieving LDN also requires recognizing them as a right holder, recognizing customary and collective tenure, security, territorial rights, access and mobility, and supporting community governance.
Local community already have knowledge and locally granted solutions.
What they need its recognition, secure rights, and meaningful participation in decisions that affect their territories.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much to our presentations.
Here, you've shared clear messages that we've been able to share.
They are not just right holders to write.
They own the policies.
They are not vulnerable communities that are being managed.
This is a key message and therefore, we thank you and We live from here with the reflection that has been shared with all of us.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, dear friends.
Thank you for sharing with us your experiences.
Next, we will invite our three panelists from Mexico, from India and Galt from Jordania, please.
Our three panels.
Welcome everyone.
You can now take your seats.
Now that we have heard from the voices from the s, the reflection of their lived life, lived experiences, daily experiences.
Now we want to hear from the panelists that are here, also from their expositions are how is it that we can think from this reality, from the reflections that have been shared, from the connection of voices to far distant places, but also unite us in this fight for understanding, for acknowledgment, for the rights, for this invite to be at the tables and be part of the decision.
I'd like to give the word to Mr.
Eric Mexico to be able to start us off.
Here, I will ask our panelists to control those interventions in 5 minutes.
As we are letting the schedule, so she is ten speech in 5 minutes.
She will help us once there is 1 minute to end your presentation.
You to be able to understand.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Dear moderators.
They come friends from local communities, sisters and brothers of the indigenous people and friends from the agriculture sector and forest sector in And I will talk about our knowledge from the local communities, and they are not only the holders of the rights that the territory, the communities also organize the contribute to the fight against degradation because the degradation is their resources and affect their daily life.
But frequently many governments haven't recognized their support their community contributions.
And so I will talk about it very necessary participation from different parts, and we have seen different participations in this gens like the local communities and indigenous peoples.
So it's very necessary that the local communities can So their voices can be heard in these spaces that we negotiate about the politics that will have made impact on their natural resources.
I'd like to recognize the caucus of local communities as organism of the priority three participation and other ccs of the convention that is also a recognition as a facilitator organism.
And this caucus is authorized and validated for the representations of the organizations of different parts from the world.
And also it's a kind of a formal channel for integration and changes of opinions to integrate with our knowledge, with our knowledge.
And also, we also ask you to joint efforts and also to work together with our brothers of the indigenous population and also with the young people and the Cacus alongside other international organizations and also the civil society to participate fully and effectively in all the process during the convention.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Hosea for sharing with us all these proposals.
And now, we'd like to invite Mr.
Han Qiang Pan to come to the stage and also share with us your insights.
Pavana Habari Alliance of Women Pastors of India kindly take the flow.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Jay Malhari.
Jay Mal Hahari is one of the greeting from my regions and let me translate you for you that Jamalhari means i means victory and Mlhari means pastoralist.
It's a victory of pastoralist and as a local community, we belong in the local community, we need to think about how we can make a victory of not only pastoralist, but for the fishery, all for the victory.
Here, I wanted to share that our colleagues and our friends share the word challenge is the pastoralist farmers and fisheries people are facing But I think it's not only enough with the women.
Local community, of course, is a marginalized, but women are the more marginalized from this local community.
I wanted to share a few aspects from the pestleist women as I belong to the pestleist community as a buffalo herder.
As we know that the pestist women always and of course, conserves and restores land since generations.
But we need to have not recognization.
In pastoralism, of course, men are working very hard with women also working equal.
I think in some way more the pasist women are working to sustain our livestock.
I always have a positive bias with my pasalist women and towards women all over the local community.
So what we are asking for the unity than other that recognize us as a leader, not beneficiary, as we have conserve our knowledge, we pass our a knowledge to next generation.
So we are the leader, not a beneficiary.
When you are developing the project for the restorations, when you're talking about the land, asks us, involve us from the first things, not as a beneficiary, who are you giving that? Second, I think when we are talking about the land right, as a pastoralist women, we have not individuals land right, we are always dependent on the commons and in nowadays, common are shrinking.
The lands are given to the development project, lands are given to the mining, which we heard from the Mongolian cing given to the windmills in these situations, pastors will not survive.
Because without land, we will not survive and if pastalism not survive, there are the whole community will not survive and which is from same generations, this community live with the livestock, live with the landscape, and live with their cultures.
If pastoralism will not survive, I think whole culture will not survive.
We need to think when we are talking about the land right, we need to involve the women and the community in the land right things.
The third one is that when you invest, please invert direct pastors organizations direct to the women, direct to the youth because women are the core of the pastoralism in farming, in factories, and youth are the future for generations.
If we not think about who are at the heart of the local community, if you are not think about the future of the community, I think we will meet the whole generations who will keep this livelihood alive.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Now we shall give the award to Talji from Jordania community cooperative to be able to share also her experience with A.
Thank you very much.
Good morning.
A member and member of the committee of the international indigenous community committee and sorry.
So the ICC individuals and community conserved areas threats of life consorpum and a I would a bit explain about my community and our challenges and why it happened that I arrived here for since 30 years of working.
I am here to talk to you.
It started when the government decided to take our customer land and to establish a nature reserve on our customer land.
This conservation approach was without people, no concept of the people, no real engagement of the people, and this as the record goes back 500 to 800 stewardship and conservation of our customer land.
We kept the biodiversity, everything because it is our house, it is our pharmacy, it is our culture, it is our future.
Conservation for the pastoral community is not something that we talk about in the conferences or it is our life.
We cannot live normally and we cannot thrive without conservation of biodiversity around us.
Even the walls, we take care of them, although many people think that they are enemies, we are the enemies of the world.
This is very important to know.
We are conservationists by default.
We are born, we are start like that because it is our life.
Conservation is nothing new for us.
This leads to what is now accepted even at different international organization level, which is the engagement, the re engagement of the communities and indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation.
I really admire the ICCA model, indigenous and community conserved areas territories of life because it gives back it empower the communities, the right holders to do what they have been doing for a long time and proved successful for centuries, where they conserve their territories for themselves, for their animals, and biodiversity.
Of course, it leads to other benefits to the other partners, to the whole state that we live in.
Giving the control back to the community, to the indigenous peoples and local communities to control their territories would lead to a successful conservation and thriving society on different levels.
We always talk about economic, cultural, social and environmental level.
We don't talk only about environmental level or perspective.
We should take the four columns together.
We call upon the parties to make sure that we give back the control to the communities, to the indigenous people and local communities, to the owners of the land And again, the word ownership is not in our dictionary as pastor list.
We know when we say that we are using what is used terms, but our term is the access to secure access and governance of land, but not the ownership as pastoral.
We need more areas than other users, but we can share that with others.
So this is very important to give back the control of conservation of the territories to, uh to the people who are really doing that for a long time and support them to make sure that they are successful.
The other thing is that we need to be as local communities, we need to have access to the contact group where we can inform, we can build up together the language and the topics where we can have our issues put on the table from the start and not only through the statement that we share in the panels.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for distinguished panelists for your different perspectives from Era Mexico India.
To focus more on genders and also on the local community cacus and also you have mentioned about the amplified participation in different parties and also your commitment to decisions.
There, I would like to also invite the next section for the panelists and also I'd like to invite you a big round of applause for all of them.
Now, after listening to the territorial voices, we now invite the local communities that have affirmed that they are not only beneficiaries of these policies, they are protagonists of their own territories, and they have also affirmed that territorial security and this acknowledgment of their territories has really helped to strengthen their communities and also with women that have been subject to some of these issues and the community requests that the condition can be able to guarantee how we concretize these rights, and therefore our medicine representing here, we'd like to listen to reflection response also and To this call from the Aha firm who shared decisions from the UN of restoring the A restoring hope and we want to also sit at the table for the decision.
Let me start by congratulating at the local communities Caucus.
I think it is very clear to all of us that the UN CCD and in general, all the multilateral environmental agreements cannot succeed without the involvement of the local communities in its decision making processes.
We really believe that restoring lands begins with the well being of the people in the land.
Because who knows better how to restore them and how to protect them than those who live there.
I think as one of the previous speakers say, who knows better a place that is their home, their pharmacy, their past, and their future than the local communities.
And I think us as international organizations, we have also been learning.
And I have to say, we have also learned from, I hope we are learning from some of the mistakes that we have made in the past.
I think some of the things that I heard today really speak to how we as IFF, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, for more broadly, the UN agencies are changing in the way we work at the local level.
Not too long ago, for example, the process of consultations that we had was really more one way communication.
We came to local communities, and we said, We have this solution.
Do you like it? Yes or no? Today, hopefully, with the help of all of yours, we are learning that actually it's a dialogue where we need to learn from you and we need to be guided by what pastoralists, farmers, the different stakeholders at the local level want because they know better than anybody else.
Um, I also want to reflect on another thing that I heard from one of the speakers, which is about decision making.
From our perspective, it is not about local communities affecting the decisions.
It is about local communities making the decisions and guiding the work that us international organizations do.
I just want to make a couple of comments on some of the things that EFAT is doing in this direction and maybe talk about a couple of programs that I know some of the organizations here are familiar with.
One of them, we have the Farmers Organizations Forum in EFT, which is a mechanism that brings more than 60 70 organizations across continents.
Because what we want to ensure is that small farmers, which produce about a third of the food globally and in many countries, up to 80 90% of the food that by bringing them together as farmers organizations, cooperatives, that they can also have access to, for example, credit to benefit of innovative financing mechanisms.
And I think I'll commit to ensure that the EFS Farmers Forum will continue supporting local communities in this context.
Another initiative that we have developed in response to the requests from local communities is many international organizations talk about giving the smallholder farmers access to markets.
But this sometimes leads to inherently unfair relationships.
So we have developed is private producer partnerships where we understand that the producers, the local community producers also need to the support necessary to be on a fair relationship with the market.
Whatever the market may be national or in some cases, also international.
I just want to commit once again, EFA to continue accompanying local communities on this.
Then on closing and this is more both an offer but also an ask from the local communities caucuses.
Another thing that we do is facilitate the knowledge exchange between yourselves.
Through our projects, we have projects pretty much in all the countries that are represented in this room.
So please reach out to us.
We want also to facilitate how you can learn from each other, which I think is much more useful than the knowledge that international organizations can bring, which is really maybe just of marginal importance compared to the knowledge that all of you have and can share amongst yourselves.
And again, in closing, thank you very much for the privilege and the opportunity to be here and to listen and learn from you.
Thank you very much.
Mongo.
Thank you very much.
We thank you for your contribution, your reflection.
It is very important that you've given this invite and consideration that the local communities will have this necessary help.
And as you've said, that the community are not only there to be consultations by the international communities, they have to participate in the decision making and guiding their own actions within these institutions, that implies a strengthening of the territories, the people who are there, and this is the request from this group.
And acknowledging their strengths, guaranteeing access to the economic opportunities that they have, and these mechanisms can be quite just.
Thank you very much for your information.
Now, let's welcome the next panel list.
The participants of the next panel, please proceed the Cameroon and Panava Rvdi from India and Maj Australia, Venezuela from Philippines.
So now that we have listened to the voices from the territorial voices, we have listened to the expositions here within that we've heard and we've heard opposition from the international organ, now we'd like to invite here to the table so that we can go through this process of reflection.
What do we hunt? What do this diverse, voices from territorial voices want for this diverse world from the people and their communities and especially here from the local community.
To help us to reflect with us and giving us this perspective, we request Celine to be able to share with us.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining this session.
It's for us key in this convention.
Today, as you have heard, the local communities has a case and we would like you to join them and support that case.
We heard who are the local communities and why they are and what they are asking to the convention.
We heard that local communities is a self constituted organ.
Yes, it's from organization and representative of pastoralists, agro pastoralists, peasant, agro ecological, forest dependence, small scale and artisan fishing, Afro descendant, mountain, nomadic heders, small scale farming, island and coastal communities, and other territorial content in local communities, including women and youth.
This is what we call local communities.
And local communities ask that this convention decision, the convention decision that we know, especially Io, UNRP and all others, we ask that those decisions match in reality recognized elsewhere in the multilateral system from the Convention on biodiversity to the UNFSRLC local communities, and indigenous People platform, the Civil Society and indigenous mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security, the UNIC on family Farming, and the International Year of French Land and Pastoralis and the International Year of Women's Farmers.
On the agenda item eight A, the course for local communities, welcome the Secretariat facilitation on the terms of reference process under the decision five stroke 16.
But we submit alongside the statement on all following declaration.
And we have four priorities.
First, adopt the explicit eight plus five representation model set out in our governance structure.
A geographical axis of exit incurred in defined UN sub region, and a social cultural and biocultural axis through which each sub region own self organized governance process, nominate tight holders and alternates reflecting the diversity generally present.
Two, adopt, from the accompanying technique technical note, a document rights for caucus focal point to circulate written text in contact groups, and a rule requiring that any objection blocking a mandated civil society related agenda item be accompanied by a stated reason and a public deadline for its resolution.
Three, We request that you commit the convention committee to establish adequate and sustained funding for the local communities caucus operation and effective and meaningful participation throughout the UNCCD and resolve, very important without further delay, the consultation on agenda item 8.8 deferred at the opening of plenary on the 17 August, with a public time bound and process and reporting before CP 17 closes.
And I would like to come also on the agenda item nine on land tenure, gender and and and Stone.
Of course, focus of local community welcome, the land tenure toolbox and the contact groups first substantive discussion of collective and customer tenure this week.
But we would like to in this moment to ensure that discussion explicitly recognized communal land, rent customers corridor, collective agrarian structural seasonal migration rule, winter and spring regulation.
To explicit include women from local communities, and at this blockage, be resolved with the same transparency and urgency we ask for this item.
I thank you very much.
Hello.
Now, I would like to hear I'd like to hear the representative from India Seva Mr.
Seva, you have the floor, please.
Good morning, my dear delegates, honorable guests.
I'm just grateful for all of you and especially our government of Mongolia, which you guys proposed today.
To FAO during August 2019 proposed so far IUARP International year Park Rangeland and pasties.
So we achieved that UNGCA passed a resolution on 15th March 2022.
So this is a great pleasure and we have to give a salute to the government of Mongolia, not a salute class.
Yeah.
So actually, in the 2018 and UNGCDA has passed this UN drop.
What it says the rights of the pass and also other people working in rural areas give their rights tenure rights, access natural resources rights and all these rights, we have to give.
So now it is time for, you know, that the UNCCD that Cp 16, they come out that initiative that you know to establish caucus power these local communities along with the Caucus power these indigenous peoples and also youth gender.
It is a very, very good momentum.
Now it has been created during this Cop 17 and we see all' join together and we will just get together and achieve and know that our post is getting all the rights.
So first of all, you know, this range and flagship initiatives that has been started very recently and it discovered three pillars.
What are the pillars? When we got to the knowledge.
Then again, this investment, then institutions.
But how we have to take a sustainable system, the knowledge, you know, Not only creative knowledge and what knowledge, our traditional knowledge, our indigenous knowledge are some grassroots innovations, we have all to take into account and see that, that it is being sustainable.
So knowledge is taken, we have to see that the prior informed consent, and also we have to when the land is taken away, you just discuss the free prior informed consent.
All this we have to take into account.
What the CPD says this article, AJ and also the working group, they are telling the collective that approach with indigenous knowledge and the community approaches to see that no, our land is protected, our rights are protected.
That way, we'll proceed further.
Then again, we want to this a CV 16, and also the Das five, it promotes theason 29, this inclusive community based and participator approaches for meaningful engagement of pasties and other ranged communities.
So it is time for not only these indigenous people, that local communities, and also this way, we can overcome because some of the conflicts between farmer and pasture is conflict.
For example, if all get together, we see natural farming is happening and that chemical pesticide and Vs, they spread into crops, it goes into the water pots, it a the pastural the drinking water that access.
That way we can conflict that we can overcome Now, this inter and intra community conflicts.
This is that the correct instrument it is being that now it's constituted and we have to see, we have to establish.
Then again, lastly, that in this Gobi gatherings of pastoralist government officials they come out of the red line initiatives.
Parties red line initiatives, they are giving inviolable inviolable water of the rights.
There's no protection of culture, water resources, and cultural heritage of nomadic pastoralism.
We do not compromise so that in the long run, there's no green grabbing extractive industries.
In Mongolia, what we've seen more than 70% of the land is degraded because of mining, pollution, and there's no loss of traditional customer institutions.
In that way, we have to see that what our knowledge is available, we have to take into account and we have to incorporate, and this is the right time that Cp 17 which give a good hope.
Cop 17 is a good hope for us to see that that cas for these local communities is created along with the sisters of these indigenous peoples, youth and women, and ultimately will restore our mother Earth and see that we restore our mother people joining together and it is our land and our knowledge and our people, and we have to achieve it.
Thank you.
Servo Forrest Palabar, thank you for sharing with us your perspectives.
Now, let's welcome Estrea from Asian Farmers Association.
Good afternoon.
Good morning, everyone.
I will add three more messages that are part of the local community, this Um A goal and close by reminding everyone of our main goal.
Okay.
First, we urge parties to explicitly mention in the future strategic framework post 2030 that our local communities are implementation actors and our land stewards.
We are adding in our own local communities governance structure, a dedicated Europe and Eurasia FIP to ensure their significant participation.
Also, in the discussion of the CSD, the Creek and science policy interface, we ask parties that traditional and local knowledge be read into knowledge sharing technology transfer and innovation under the CSDs work program.
And that in the science Policy Interface 27 to 2028 work program, we include they include a direct consultation channel with the local communities focus.
And for the third, may I ask how many of you have attended UN FCCT COP UNFCCC, there are few.
And how many of you have attended UNCBD COPs? Also, very few.
But, you know, also some of the Alpha members have attended both three COPs the past two years and receive synergies across these REO conventions.
The certification, land degradation, and drought are consequences of climate change and at the same time, a contributor to worsening impacts of climate change because climate change drives higher and prolonged global temperatures, drying our soil, killing off plant life, producing water shortages, which reduces our abilities to plant, to have yields income threatening food security.
Degraded and very dry lands, do not have trees and plants that can reduce soil erosion and remove topsoil vital to food production, which also reduces our climate resiliency.
Small scale women, men, young, family farmers, fishers, pastoralists, for resource gatherers know that solutions have to be integrated, diversified and should bring multiple wins in biodiversity, ecosystem restoration, and climate adaptation and mitigation.
Thus, many of our 13 million members in 16 countries in Asia are promoting agroecology in farms, fisheries, forests, pasturelands, and mountains.
Local communities are recognized under UNCBD and UNFCCC, and we urge parties to recognize local communities as well here at UNCCD.
Third, in the discussions on CSD, Creek, and science policy interface, as I mentioned before, is to be read into knowledge sharing, technology transfer, and innovation.
Now we have heard seven calls that colleague Cecil and a colleague from Seva Inja has said.
But do you know the most strategic call? It is call number one, which Cecil said.
We ask the parties here in CBD, Scope 17 to grant the caucus for local communities an institutional status as a constitutive engagement body equal to the caucuses for indigenous peoples, the gender Caucus and youth caucus while respecting the distinct rights and status of each constituency, not merely recognizing it as a facilitative mechanism.
The other calls will follow with recognition of the local communities caucus.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Then I will kindly ask the section of the panel is participating in section to take a book photo.
And then as we are celebrating also and we are celebrating this event.
So we request to all the panelists and we invite every of our panelists for a photo are running to the final days in the Cp 17, but with the aim to restore the hole and also to restore the participation.
And we also want to restore the processes of guaranteeing these rights, guaranteeing that we have the space of the tables.
This is key for the participation of the local guaranteeing guarantee to provides, guarantee to land guarantee to this life and we can be able to work together.
You.