Today 26 May in the WIN Conference Chrissy Grant, the Indigenous Chair of the IPA Advisory Committee and Member of the Steering Committee of the ICCA Consortium chaired a session on Australia’s unique Indigenous Protected Area. These are ICCAs par excellence, as they meet all three components of the definition of ICCAs: there is a deep relationship of stewardship between an indigenous people and vast territories they have conserved for tens of thousands of years. There is a national IPA programme of nearly 100 million dollars that gives financial assistance and technical advice to some 60 of the IPAs. The funding is assured for the next five years, but some of the IPAs have managed to secure funding from other sources such as conservation NGOs, including for support to indigenous community rangers. Chrissy explained that the decisions are taken by the “traditional owners” meaning the indigenous peoples themselves including particularly by the customary Elders.
WIN is the largest gathering of IPs and LCs as stewards of “land and sea country” in the world and is designed to create a permanent World Indigenous Network. By an agreement between the Australian Government and UNDP Equator Initiative, WIN will be housed in that programme but is supposed to have a participatory governance structure.
ICCA delegates who participated, expressed solidarity during the IPA event organized to
felicitate a bunch of remarkable members of aboriginal peoples of Australia for their remarkable contribution in various IPAs.
Further info:
Taghi Farvar taghi.farvar@gmail.com
Sudeep Jana janasudeep@gmail.com
ICCA Consortium 
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