Recognizing Indigenous and traditional peoples’ contribution to forest stewardship

Indigenous and traditional communities play a vital role in protecting forests through their cultural values, knowledge, and practices. Yet, the lack of standardized methods and indicators for verifying cultural impacts remains a challenge.  

Through a grant from the ISEAL Innovations Fund, funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO and UK International Development, FSC led a pioneering initiative to explore how impact verification frameworks can be adapted to Indigenous and traditional community contexts. We worked with ISEAL partners, experts and communities in Brazil and Canada, engaging with more than 400 Indigenous and traditional peoples across the two countries, and combined desk-based research, expert discussions and field testing to identify effective ways of assessing sociocultural impact on landscapes. 

The result is a proposed framework that combines methodological rigour with flexibility, allowing cultural values to be recognized without imposing external definitions of culture or compromising community rights and self-determination. These findings can be found  in the learning brief. 

Some key learnings: 

• Culture is holistic and interconnected, so indicators need to reflect local priorities and realities rather than fixed, external metrics.
• Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) must be applied as a continuous process, not a one-time step, and should include the participation of elders, women and youth.
• Verification methods and tools need to be adapted using accessible, culturally relevant approaches, drawing on qualitative and community-led evidence.
• Timelines should stay flexible and aligned with community governance, with capacity building and funding support in place for participating communities.
• Auditors and verifiers need strong cultural competency to engage with communities appropriately. 

The lessons from this project inform FSC’s work on Cultural Ecosystem Services, helping build a framework that is culturally appropriate, credible, and relevant to markets. The goal is to ensure that Indigenous and traditional communities receive greater recognition for their contributions to forest stewardship while maintaining ownership of their cultural values, knowledge, and practices.  

Read the Learning Brief by FSC

Source: FSC

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