Indigenous peoples’ land rights have been recognised as important for curbing global warming for the first time in the United Nations report on climate change. The special report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), written by more than 100 scientists, called for big changes to land use, farming and eating habits to help cut emissions that are heating up the Earth. The report called for wiser land use, including protecting forests from being cut down for crops and grazing, and eco-friendly farming that uses fewer chemicals, such as fertiliser which emits planet-warming nitrous oxide. Indigenous people customarily own more than 50 percent of the world’s lands, yet governments only recognise their ownership rights to 10 percent, they said. The IPCC also called for more support for poor farmers, particularly women, to limit the impacts of extreme weather and creeping deserts and enable them to feed their families. About 500 million people live in areas that experienced desertification between the 1980s and 2000s, the report said.

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