• Contact: Maedeh Salimi
  • Address: No 108 Azerbaijan Street, 1316954968 Tehran, Iran
  • Phone: +98 21 66-400-811
  • Email: cenesta@cenesta.org
  • Web: www.cenesta.org
  • Members:
    CENESTA

CENESTA

The Centre for Sustainable Development and Environment

Member since: 2024

Working towards these commitments

Respect, protect and strengthen the land rights of women and men living in poverty, ensuring that no one is deprived of the use and control of the land on which their well-being and human dignity depend, including through eviction, expulsion or exclusion, and with compulsory changes to tenure undertaken only in line with international law and standards on human rights.
1

Secure Tenure Rights

Ensure equitable land distribution and public investment that supports small-scale farming systems, including through redistributive agrarian reforms that counter excessive land concentration, provide for secure and equitable use and control of land, and allocate appropriate land to landless rural producers and urban residents, whilst supporting smallholders as investors and producers, such as through cooperative and partnership business models.
2

Strong Small-Scale Farming Systems

Respect and protect the inherent land and territorial rights of indigenous peoples, as set out in ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including by recognizing that respect for indigenous knowledge and cultures contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment".
5

Secure territorial rights for Indigenous Peoples

Enable the role of local land users in territorial and ecosystem management, recognizing that sustainable development and the stewardship of ecosystems are best achieved through participatory decision-making and management at the territorial-level, empowering local land users and their communities with the authority, means and incentives to carry out this responsibility.
6

Locally-managed ecosystems

Ensure that processes of decision-making over land are inclusive, so that policies, laws, procedures and decisions concerning land adequately reflect the rights, needs and aspirations of individuals and communities who will be affected by them. This requires the empowerment of those who otherwise would face limitations in representing their interests, particularly through support to land users' and other civil society organizations that are best able to inform, mobilize and legitimately represent marginalized land users, and their participation in multi-stakeholder platforms for policy dialogue.
7

Inclusive decision-making

Ensure transparency and accountability, through unhindered and timely public access to all information that may contribute to informed public debate and decision-making on land issues at all stages, and through decentralization to the lowest effective level, to facilitate participation, accountability and the identification of locally appropriate solutions
8

Transparent and accessible information

Mission

Promote and act on recognition of Territories of Life (ICCAs); nurturing bio-cultural diversity and wisdom; promote sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty, and community-driven natural resource management, ensuring a harmonious balance between ecological integrity and social prosperity.

Objectives

Secure recognition of Territories of life or Indigenous community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCAs), safeguard ancestral knowledge and empower customary practices for preservation, sustainable use, and restoration of ecosystems. Advancing sustainable farming, food autonomy, and Agroecological approaches, while fostering community collaboration in managing natural resources.

Constituencies

Promoting a suitable recognition of indigenous mobile pastoralists' Territories of life (ICCAs);
Promoting and safeguarding indigenous knowledge and strengthening indigenous mobile pastoralists' customary institutions with the aim of preservation, sustainable use, and community
restoration of their lands and territories;
Sustainable agriculture, food/seed sovereignty and agroecology;
Collaborative and Community-based natural resource management.

  • Contact: Maedeh Salimi
  • Address: No 108 Azerbaijan Street, 1316954968 Tehran, Iran
  • Phone: +98 21 66-400-811
  • Email: cenesta@cenesta.org
  • Web: www.cenesta.org
  • Members:
    CENESTA