Where Land and Water Meet: Who Decides? A Land Dialogues Session
Join us at the Ocean Pavilion (Blue Zone) during CBD COP17 for a Land Dialogues session:
Where Land and Water Meet: Who Decides?
Community authority and biodiversity finance
A mangrove is both a forest and a fishing ground. Yet formal recognition and funding may treat land and water separately, even where communities govern them as one connected territory.
This session will bring together Indigenous Peoples, small-scale fishworkers and local communities alongside funders and practitioners to explore how communities govern across connected land and water territories, and what happens when funding or institutional boundaries cut across them.
Drawing on experiences across mangroves, peatlands and coasts, the conversation will ask: When communities govern land and water as one territory, how do funding and institutional choices strengthen or constrain their authority?
Through a moderated conversation and small-group discussions, participants will explore what enables communities to govern across land and water, how external systems affect that governance, and what different choices could better support community authority.