Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) is a global coalition of more than 200 organisations dedicated to advancing the forest, land and natural resource rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and rural women who rely on community-based tenure.

At A Glance

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) is a global coalition of more than 200 organisations dedicated to advancing the forest, land and natural resource rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and rural women who rely on community-based tenure. We are working with RRI to support a pioneering analysis of local communities’ rights to water in 15 countries around the world.

While the concepts of land and forest tenure are well established, reforms to water laws have mostly failed to recognise the importance of the role played by local people as the de facto managers of many of the world’s most ecologically and economically important freshwater systems. Findings from this analysis will  be used to not only draw attention to the concept of “water tenure”, but also to motivate governments and the international community to take action to protect these rights in a way which reflects the intrinsic relationship between water, land and forest tenure.