Practicing human rights across scale: indigenous peoples’ affectedness and recognition in REDD+ governance

Abstract

ABSTRACTIndigenous peoples belong to those societal groups most heavily affected by the impacts of climate change and by governance arrangements on forests. In more recent years they have strived to bring their concerns to the fore in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This paper investigates how indigenous peoples have framed their participation in REDD+, an initiative to protect forests to combat climate change. Indigenous peoples reframed their affectedness that results from their proximity to, and dependence on, forests, into an asset by emphasising their specific knowledge and expertise in managing natural forests. This reframing can be seen as an example of the spread of the ‘affectedness paradigm’ in global (climate) politics that manifests itself across levels. At the UNFCCC, indigenous peoples have managed to expand the recognition of their rights through REDD+ decisions. REDD+ financing initiatives outside the UNFCCC have adopted detailed rules to expand indigeno...