Rights, justice, and REDD+: Lessons from climate advocacy and early implementation in the amazon basin

Aware of the impacts that both climate change and related policy reforms would bring worldwide, organizations that support forests communities have been keen participants in international climate change talks. Many of them have capitalized on recent advancements in international human rights law for their activism. This chapter presents some early lessons on the integration of human rights into climate advocacy and governance reforms for forest-related climate actions. Lessons are taken, mainly, from two arenas: (1) the multilateral negotiations on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) at the Conferences of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and (2) the implementation of UNFCCC agreements in countries of the occidental Amazon Basin (Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) by international programs such as UNREDD, FCPF and States.