Alain Frechette, PhD, is the Director of Strategic Analysis and Global Engagement at Rights and Resources Initiative. He has over 25 of experience in natural resource management, biodiversity conservation, and climate change—focusing on international development for the better part of the last two decades. Alain began his career with state and provincial forest and protected area agencies in the United States and Canada before pursuing strategic consultancies with multilateral organizations, development agencies, and NGOs such as IUCN, DFID, the World Bank, and various UN institutions across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
Realizing Rights, Securing Climate Outcomes
A. FRECHETTE
In the context of increasing global greenhouse gas emissions, governments, the private-sector, and the broader international community increasingly call for the expansion and intensification of terrestrial carbon sequestration, as a means of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Absent the political will to rapidly decarbonize the global economy and scalable technologies to capture source emissions, the vast majority of state and non-state actors are turning to land-based carbon dioxide removals (CDR) to meet their long term net-zero pledges, but emerging evidence shows that realizing national commitments would require the mitigation prioritization of almost 1.2 billion hectares of land, increasing the risk of conflict with other land use priorities, and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in particular. Owing to the opportunity costs of climate investments and the higher mitigation potential of tropical and sub-tropical forest areas, local peoples in low-and-middle-income countries are likely to bear the brunt of global climate ambitions. Some 2 billion people currently live in and depend on rural landscapes to meet their livelihood needs. They produce over 80 percent of the foods consumed in the developing world, and despite their role as essential stewards of the world’s biodiversity and remaining natural landscapes, their land and forest rights – including rights to the carbon stored therein – are inadequately recognized by states, jeopardizing the prospects of transformative actions that can accelerate progress towards greater equity, sustainable development, and poverty eradication.