SDSG Selected for Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Program
Sustainable Management of Natural Resources & Climate Leadership

SDSG is proud to announce that we were selected, along with our partner African Voices for Africa's Forest, for a Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange. The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX.

With support from the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Program, we are bringing together 20 rural women and 50 stakeholders around the Bimbia Bonadikombo Community Forest (BBCF) in southwest Cameroon for a collaborative workshop from the 2nd to the 4th of August 2023 in Limbe, Cameroon.

By mobilizing, sensitizing, and raising awareness amongst forest user groups and also assisting the village and local councils to mainstream gender, we aim to increase rural women’s access to benefits from REDD+ projects while increasing their visibility as forest managers and leaders for natural resource sustainability. 
Our project focuses on six forest-dependent communities of the Bimbia Bonadikombo Community Forest which is among five ecological regions in Cameroon with ongoing REDD+ pilot projects coordinated by the Programme National de Développement Participatif (PNDP) with financial support from the World Bank and the Agence Française du Développement (AFD). Among its objectives, are the inclusion of rural women, youth, and other vulnerable groups in decision-making and project execution. Findings from local researchers show that this objective has not been achieved and there is an ongoing need for inclusive bottom-to-top decision-making.

To this aim, our collaborative project will be participatory and focus on women, youth, village and local authorities, and other internally displaced non-landowners who make use of the forest. Our goal is to enhance rural women’s participation in climate change, REDD+ and natural resource decision-making platforms and projects in the Bimbia Bonadikombo community forest. 
Meet our Cameroon partner, Lamma EWI. She is a 2022 Mandela Washington Fellow and an Environmental and Climate Justice Advocate on women's participation in climate change projects and decision making platforms. She is a UN Agora Climate Action Winner, climate educationist and ecopreneur, and a PhD candidate in Natural Resource and Environmental Management at the University of Buea.  
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If you are interested in hearing about the Cameroon workshop, we are hosting an webinar on August 16th to share our learnings and planned actions coming out of the workshops. The webinar is free and open to the public. You can register at the link below to receive the Zoom link information.
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The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX.
SDSG Presents Paper and Leads Panel on Indigenous Rights to Consultation
FNREL Special Institute on International Mining and Energy Law
SDSG recently presented a paper and led a panel on Seeking Compliance with Treaty Obligations to Recognize Indigenous Rights to Consultation at The Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law (FNREL)'s Special Institute on International Mining and Energy Law, Development, and Investment in Mexico City.
Photo Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas at https://www.gaiaamazonas.org/en/noticias/2019-07-25_what-is-ilo-convention-169-and-why-it-is-important/ 
SDSG President, Luke Danielson, and co-authors, Flavia Noejovich from Lima, Peru and Sebastian Donoso from Santiago, Chile led a panel discussion on:

  • Compliance with international human rights obligations and standards on consultation and consent
  • Court decisions that invalidate actions taken without adequate consultation with Indigenous peoples
  • Attempts to establish national regulations defining the consultative process with different outcomes across the Americas
  • How the private sector could and should participate in a consultation between governments and Indigenous rights holders
  • Approaches and lessons learned in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru
You can read the English version of the final paper, entitled The Path to Peach and Development: Emerging Legal Framework for the Development of Natural Resources on Indigenous Lands, on our SDSG webpage where we highlight work we are doing related to The Green Mining Boom And Indigenous Rights.
Thank you to the Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law (formerly the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation) for supporting the translation of this paper from Spanish to English, and to co-author José Mozó for leading the translation project. The English version was originally published by the Foundation in the manual of the International Mining and Oil & Gas Law, Development, and Investment Special Institute (2023).
Photo Credit: PUINAMUDT. Prior consultation for lot 192 in 2015 at https://www.iwgia.org/en/news/3918-consultation-or-non-consultation-here-lies-the-dilemma.html
The paper, originally written in Spanish and entitled El camino hacia la paz y el desarrollo:marco jurídico emergente para el desarrollo de recursos naturales en tierras indígenas, will soon be published by the Universidad de Deusto’s International Research School in Bilbao, Spain as part of their Human Rights Collection.

Stay tuned!!
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