Study finds that Indigenous Territories are as effective as Protected Areas in preserving forest's carbon stocks
In a recent study in PLOS ONE, researchers from 6 different countries, including Camilo Alejo and Catherine Potvin of the Department of Biology at McGill University, examined the importance of Indigenous Territories in climate change mitigation across Panama and the Amazon Basin. They found that Indigenous Territories represent effective natural solutions to meet the Paris Agreement by protecting forests and storing carbon. Given the role they play, the researchers say that Indigenous peoples should benefit from payments countries receive for avoided greenhouse emissions.
What question did you set out to answer?
Natural environments like forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store that carbon in the forest ecosystem, mainly in living biomass and soil. The world's forests store approximately 861 gigatons of carbon. Carbon stocks refer to the amount of carbon stored in this way. Protecting and managing forests are cost-efficient ways to mitigate climate change by increasing carbon stocks and reducing land-use emissions from activities such as forestry or agriculture. Indigenous Territories, customary lands of traditional societies who inhabited countries before colonization, and Protected Areas, whose main objective is the conservation of nature, might be considered part of these natural climate solutions. Our study aimed to estimate the actual effect of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas on forest's carbon stocks while considering the influence of their location across Panama and the Amazon basin portions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil.
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