Earth Insight’s Florencia Librizzi explains how licensing decisions, community governance, and long-term funding will shape the delivery of a global forest tenure commitment.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, some land appears on maps of both titled Indigenous territories and proposed oil blocks. The overlap raises a question for governments working to secure land rights. Once a territory is legally recognized, who gets to decide what happens there?
At COP30 in Belém, governments launched the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment (ILTC). By 2030, they aim to extend tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples across at least 80 million hectares in tropical forest countries and strengthen governance and protection across another 80 million hectares where rights are already recognized. A separate Forest and Land Tenure Pledge commits US$1.8 billion for 2026–2030.
At COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, Global Land Alliance and its partners are convening a November 17 session to review the first year of implementation. The session is part of the Land Tenure Plan to Accelerate Solutions, which brings governments, rights holders, funders, and technical partners together to identify what support is needed.
On November 11, I spoke with Florencia Librizzi, Deputy Director of Earth Insight. She led work on a report examining how industrial pressures affect territorial rights. Earth Insight prepared the report with the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, the Tenure Facility, the Rights and Resources Initiative, Global Land Alliance, and PINGO’s Forum.
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What does secure tenure look like in practice?
Secure tenure means more than receiving a land title. It means Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples can exercise their rights, govern their territories, make decisions about land and resource use, and pursue their own priorities without those rights being undermined by external interests or the risk of losing those rights in the future.
A government could meet its hectare targets under the ILTC while continuing to issue mining or oil concessions that overlap with recognized territories, disregarding community governance plans, relying on time-limited tenure arrangements that leave communities uncertain about the long-term security of their rights, or failing to provide the institutional support needed to exercise those rights.
The real measure of success is not only how many hectares are recognized, but whether people have the authority and means to determine what happens in their territories. Legal recognition is fundamental, but it must be accompanied by effective governance and protection.
What does Ecuador show about how governments make licensing decisions?
Ecuador illustrates why territorial recognition and industrial development policies cannot operate independently. Our research finds that the proposed Suroriente oil licensing round covers approximately 2.2 million hectares, of which 76% overlap Indigenous Peoples’ territories, the majority of which are titled. Across the Ecuadorian Amazon, oil blocks overlap approximately 67% of Indigenous Peoples’ territories.
Before issuing extractive licenses affecting Indigenous Peoples’ territories, governments should identify potential conflicts with territorial rights, engage Indigenous governing institutions through their own decision-making processes, respect territorial life and management plans, and fulfill applicable consultation and free, prior and informed consent obligations.
Indigenous Peoples, represented by their governing bodies, must be recognized as rights-holders with decision-making authority, not simply stakeholders to be consulted after development priorities have already been determined. Their decisions, including opposition to unwanted extractive activities, must be respected in accordance with applicable human rights standards.
The ILTC offers an opportunity to ensure that governments reach greater policy coherence and ensure that recognition of territorial rights comes together with protecting those territories from extractive and large-scale industrial activity that undermine them.
What are communities already doing to protect their territories?
The Boso Asukomo community forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a compelling example.
Located in Équateur Province, within the Lake Télé–Lake Tumba landscape, this sacred forest illustrates how customary governance, cultural relationships with nature and legal recognition can reinforce one another.
Boso Asukomo is one of three local community forest concessions in the area that together protect approximately 17,328 hectares. Our spatial analysis found that Boso Asukomo Sacred Forest experienced less than 0.5% forest loss in 2025, despite significant deforestation pressures nationally.
The example highlights the importance of recognizing community forests and supporting governance systems rooted in local knowledge and cultural practices. But recognition alone is not enough. Communities also need access to resources, viable livelihood opportunities and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their territories.
The lesson is that governments and funders should support the strengthening of the governance systems and territorial initiatives communities are already developing, rather than impose externally designed models of conservation or development. (CTIDD project account)
What should the Forest and Land Tenure Pledge pay for?
Financing should support both the recognition of territorial rights and the measures needed to make those rights effective and durable. Securing recognition requires investment in territorial mapping, community consultation processes, building local technical capacity, and legal representation.
Financing should also help close gaps in data on Indigenous Peoples’, local communities’ and Afro-descendant Peoples’ territories and rights, addressing significant regional disparities in data availability and quality. This information is essential to documenting governments’ progress towards the ILTC and enabling independent monitoring of territorial conditions, threats and the security of rights. Investment should support communities’ capacity to generate, manage and use these data, respecting their authority over how information about their territories is collected and shared.
Once rights are recognized, financing should strengthen territorial governance institutions, community monitoring, legal defense, territorial management plans, protection against external threats and sustainable economies defined by rights-holders themselves.
The US$1.8 billion Forest and Land Tenure Pledge is an important opportunity to support both dimensions of the ILTC: recognition where rights remain unsecured, and stronger governance and protection where tenure is already recognized.
The most important principle is that Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples should determine their own priorities and how resources are used, through their institutions and governance systems.
Funding needs to be direct, flexible and long-term. Communities should not have to constantly adapt their priorities to short-term donor projects. Financing should strengthen their ability to govern their territories on their own terms, including opportunities for women and youth consistent with community priorities.
What should be possible to verify by the next COP?
By the next COP, I would like to see Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples to be able to point to a concrete measure of progress on the ground, for instance a territorial decision made by their territorial governing institution that has been respected and acted upon by national government authorities. That could mean a conflicting industrial concession has been reviewed, a territorial management plan is being implemented, a previously unrecognized territory has received legal recognition, or community monitoring has triggered a meaningful government response to an emerging threat. These are practical indicators that commitments are translating into territorial security.
Technical partners can make an important contribution through providing support on participatory mapping, legal and technical support for tenure recognition, territorial planning, geospatial analysis and community-led monitoring to ensure both progress on the commitments and actual protection of territories. They can also help governments identify conflicts between recognized territorial rights and industrial concessions, improve information systems and develop monitoring frameworks that measure the effective exercise of rights rather than hectares alone.
The key is that technical partners should support the priorities and decisions of rights-holders, not substitute for them. Their greatest contribution is helping connect community-defined priorities with the legal, technical and institutional processes needed to make them effective.
Ultimately, the ILTC should be judged by whether more Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples are more secure in their territories and better able to determine their own futures.
This interview is part of Global Land Alliance’s COP31 communications, with TenureSecurity.org as communications partner.
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