The Crossing Point between REDD and Indigenous Peoples’ Stewardship Rights : An Ethical Perspective

Reducing emissions form deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) is a climate change mitigation mechanism addressing the current environmental crisis by increasing the value of standing forests. Forests are simultaneously the home of millions of indigenous peoples who often find themselves in a marginalized position. In the past years international and national law have addressed indigenous peoples’ rights and status by reference to their intimate relationship to the natural environment. This relationship could be translated into a stewardship worldview, which provides the ethical dimension of indigenous peoples’ rights. Such an ethic could also be partially detected in some trends in international and national environmental law regulation. Thus a stewardship framework was chosen as it represents the crossing point between indigenous peoples’ rights and environmental policies. REDD’s regulation provided by its three main multilateral forums (UN-REDD Programme, FCPF and CBFF) and the one under negotiations (UNFCCC) is explored with the focal question of whether nature and indigenous peoples’ rights are protected simultaneously. In other words: is REDD shaping to be a more tangible realization of indigenous peoples’ stewardship role and their rights underpinned by it