Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti
My research and policy work argues for the effectiveness of rights-based approaches. My approach is interdisciplinary and combines ethnographic and quantitative methods as well as knowledge transfer and dissemination activities for impact. In doing so, I follow three interconnected pathways.
1. Development and Well-being: Stemming from thirteen years of collaborative research with indigenous Amazonian peoples, my work challenges mainstream development conceptions of wellbeing and the security-development nexus by examining local experiences of large-scale extractivism in post-war Peru. My publications engage debates on development through issues of natural resource extraction, post-war reconstruction, and social movements, and contribute to debates on decolonized research methodologies.
2. Climate Change and Environmental Governance: I research participatory processes related to climate change mitigation and low emissions development in Brazil and Peru. I work on the bottlenecks preventing such processes from reaching more equitable outcomes for local peoples. My research has led to outputs to inform academic and public debates through policy briefs, dissemination in global events, and engagement with governments, grassroots organizations, and NGOs in the Amazon. This work led to the participatory development of a reflexive learning tool with local communities in the Peruvian Amazon. The tool has been adopted by Peru’s Natural Protected Areas Service and has been adapted for implementation in Indonesia.
3. Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice: I examine rights violations and local experiences of socio-environmental injustice in the context of climate change mitigation strategies in the Amazon stemming from the SDGs and Paris Agreement (e.g. REDD+ and protected areas). My work is an evidence-based proposal towards a transition from safeguards than ‘do no harm’ to ones that ‘do better’, are gender-transformative, and hold environmental justice and UN-recognised rights at its core. This pathway includes scholarly outputs and capacity development work with indigenous organizations.
I have held posts at the universities of Durham, St Andrews, and Sussex.
1. Development and Well-being: Stemming from thirteen years of collaborative research with indigenous Amazonian peoples, my work challenges mainstream development conceptions of wellbeing and the security-development nexus by examining local experiences of large-scale extractivism in post-war Peru. My publications engage debates on development through issues of natural resource extraction, post-war reconstruction, and social movements, and contribute to debates on decolonized research methodologies.
2. Climate Change and Environmental Governance: I research participatory processes related to climate change mitigation and low emissions development in Brazil and Peru. I work on the bottlenecks preventing such processes from reaching more equitable outcomes for local peoples. My research has led to outputs to inform academic and public debates through policy briefs, dissemination in global events, and engagement with governments, grassroots organizations, and NGOs in the Amazon. This work led to the participatory development of a reflexive learning tool with local communities in the Peruvian Amazon. The tool has been adopted by Peru’s Natural Protected Areas Service and has been adapted for implementation in Indonesia.
3. Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice: I examine rights violations and local experiences of socio-environmental injustice in the context of climate change mitigation strategies in the Amazon stemming from the SDGs and Paris Agreement (e.g. REDD+ and protected areas). My work is an evidence-based proposal towards a transition from safeguards than ‘do no harm’ to ones that ‘do better’, are gender-transformative, and hold environmental justice and UN-recognised rights at its core. This pathway includes scholarly outputs and capacity development work with indigenous organizations.
I have held posts at the universities of Durham, St Andrews, and Sussex.
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Publications by Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti
The growing interest in RBAs, and their inclusion in frameworks that will guide development, conservation, and climate projects over the next decade is laudable. However, there is a shortage of analysis of RBA experiences, both their conceptualization and practice. Such analysis would advance discussions on the impact of these approaches and provide lessons to enable transformative change.
This review is a preliminary assessment that aims to advance the ongoing conversation on RBAs. Our primary interest is the conception and implementation of RBAs in forest-based initiatives, but we reviewed the wider scholarly and gray literature on RBAs in development, conservation, and climate action initiatives. The review was complemented by interviews with a multi-actor group of specialists and advocates.
• Bioeconomy can learn important lessons on social inclusion from previous research on redistribution, recognition, and representation concerns in forest-based climate initiatives.
• Initiatives should recognize Indigenous Peoples and local communities as right-holders in their design and implementation.
• They should ensure that enabling conditions are in place for women, youth and Indigenous Peoples and local communities to participate effectively throughout an initiative's lifetime.
• Initiatives should also provide mechanisms to promote a just and fair distribution of costs and benefits between stakeholders.
- This flyer summarises voluntary safeguard standards relevant to REDD+, as well as the guidelines of regional and international multilateral funding institutions.
- We compared nine criteria to understand differences across standards and guidelines, focusing on their engagement with the rights of the IPLCs that steward the forests where REDD+ is implemented.
- There is considerable variation in how safeguard standards and guidelines engage with the rights of IPLCs.
- Voluntary standards can support a transition from ‘doing no harm’ to ‘doing better’ by catalysing a rights-based transformation to re-engage with the women and men of IPLCs as rights-holders and partners rather than beneficiaries.
REDD+ and other natural resource management initiatives to understand when safeguards work, for whom, and why. It seeks to extract lessons for rights-responsive safeguards standards and guidelines to protect and support the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and the women within those groups. This work, carried out under CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+, is part of a series on REDD+ safeguards, focusing on the rights and social inclusion concerns of the women and men of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that steward the forests where climate solutions are implemented.
Multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) have been positioned as a transformative solution for more sustainable decision- making in forestry, land use, and climate change interventions. Yet, we propose that an MSF’s resilience and potential to promote equity is impeded if local peoples are not regarded as key partners rather than ‘beneficiaries’, and if the forum and/or its outcomes are not meaningfully institutionalized.
Intensity and embeddedness are useful analytical tools that go beyond typologies that identify characteristics found in successful MSFs. They are helpful in terms of explaining how different approaches across different contexts function and add nuance to simplified dichotomies. The analytical application of intensity and embeddedness to the analysis of MSFs permits new insights as they describe cases and explain how they differ in terms of equity.
The growing interest in RBAs, and their inclusion in frameworks that will guide development, conservation, and climate projects over the next decade is laudable. However, there is a shortage of analysis of RBA experiences, both their conceptualization and practice. Such analysis would advance discussions on the impact of these approaches and provide lessons to enable transformative change.
This review is a preliminary assessment that aims to advance the ongoing conversation on RBAs. Our primary interest is the conception and implementation of RBAs in forest-based initiatives, but we reviewed the wider scholarly and gray literature on RBAs in development, conservation, and climate action initiatives. The review was complemented by interviews with a multi-actor group of specialists and advocates.
• Bioeconomy can learn important lessons on social inclusion from previous research on redistribution, recognition, and representation concerns in forest-based climate initiatives.
• Initiatives should recognize Indigenous Peoples and local communities as right-holders in their design and implementation.
• They should ensure that enabling conditions are in place for women, youth and Indigenous Peoples and local communities to participate effectively throughout an initiative's lifetime.
• Initiatives should also provide mechanisms to promote a just and fair distribution of costs and benefits between stakeholders.
- This flyer summarises voluntary safeguard standards relevant to REDD+, as well as the guidelines of regional and international multilateral funding institutions.
- We compared nine criteria to understand differences across standards and guidelines, focusing on their engagement with the rights of the IPLCs that steward the forests where REDD+ is implemented.
- There is considerable variation in how safeguard standards and guidelines engage with the rights of IPLCs.
- Voluntary standards can support a transition from ‘doing no harm’ to ‘doing better’ by catalysing a rights-based transformation to re-engage with the women and men of IPLCs as rights-holders and partners rather than beneficiaries.
REDD+ and other natural resource management initiatives to understand when safeguards work, for whom, and why. It seeks to extract lessons for rights-responsive safeguards standards and guidelines to protect and support the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and the women within those groups. This work, carried out under CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+, is part of a series on REDD+ safeguards, focusing on the rights and social inclusion concerns of the women and men of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that steward the forests where climate solutions are implemented.
Multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) have been positioned as a transformative solution for more sustainable decision- making in forestry, land use, and climate change interventions. Yet, we propose that an MSF’s resilience and potential to promote equity is impeded if local peoples are not regarded as key partners rather than ‘beneficiaries’, and if the forum and/or its outcomes are not meaningfully institutionalized.
Intensity and embeddedness are useful analytical tools that go beyond typologies that identify characteristics found in successful MSFs. They are helpful in terms of explaining how different approaches across different contexts function and add nuance to simplified dichotomies. The analytical application of intensity and embeddedness to the analysis of MSFs permits new insights as they describe cases and explain how they differ in terms of equity.