How Rights for Forest Guardians Can Break the Pandemic Circuit, Save Species and Slow CO2 Rise

Join Sustain What host Andy Revkin in a news-breaking briefing on an under-appreciated strategy that can help break the circuit leading to pandemics: boosting the territorial and human rights of front-line indigenous and local tropical forest guardians. Invaded and degraded forest frontiers are pathways for pathogens to cross species.

Join top experts and indigenous representatives as they offer evidence and policy paths that can also conserve biological and cultural diversity and limit climate change.

Featuring:

Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organization that conducts research and outreach programs on global health, conservation and international development. http://ecohealthalliance.org

Norman Jiwan, a Kerambai Dayak from West Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) and an NGO activist who works for the Indonesian environmental and human rights NGOs, TuK INDONESIA, member of WALHI (FoE Indonesia), and Sawit Watch, a watchdog group that tracks the palm oil industry in the region.

https://j.mp/normanjiwan

https://sawitwatch.or.id/

Pamela McElwee, Associate Professor in human ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University

A recent paper: Indigenous people vital for understanding environmental change https://phys.org/news/2020-07-indigen...

Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, also the Convener of the Science Panel for the Amazon, which will produce the first scientific assessment to cover the entire Amazon basin and its biomes.

https://www.theamazonwewant.org/

https://www.unsdsn.org/

Mina Setra, an indigenous woman leader (Dayak Pompakng) from West Kalimantan, Indonesia. She is currently the Deputy to Secretary General of AMAN, the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago of Indonesia.

https://j.mp/minasetra

Peter Veit, Director of the Land and Resource Rights (LRR) initiative at the World Resources Institute.

https://www.wri.org/profile/peter-veit

The panel comes during a week marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change and centering on raising awareness of land rights as a conservation path. More info here and via the hashtag #createaspark: https://www.landrightsnow.org/