‘Pay indigenous people to protect forests’
Tropical forests have been inhabited by humans for thousands of years and human activities on a traditional scale may actually help promote forest diversity. The indigenous people practice rotational farming in the forests and they rarely misuse the resources, which is a source of their livelihood. The foremost effort to conserve the rainforests should be to value the indigenous people as they know the forests better than any one else. To lower down the greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, the rich countries should first invest in the people who live in the forests and use the resources.
The rights of the indigenous people should be recognized. ”There are plenty of evidences from around the world that communities conserve their forests only when their rights are recognized.” Increasing deforestation is a major reason for almost a fifth of the world’s emission of carbon dioxide, lowering it down is the easiest, quickest and the cheapest way of combating this problem.
To sum up, indigenous people have intimate knowledge about the forests. Therefore, all efforts in battling with this problem should be based on the rights of the indigenous people as they see the forests as their source of livelihood, and moreover their role should be recognized in sustainable forest management.
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Source: Guardian