Cop26 has launched a fund that aims to give 1.7 billion dollars to indigenous peoples, and other local communities, for the sake of ending deforestation.

The money will be used to "support [their] capacity to govern themselves collectively, assist with mapping and registration work, back national land reform and help resolve conflict over territories."

This can be a good idea, but it needs to be done carefully. Indigenous peoples are made up of human beings who have the same moral and intellectual flexibility as other human beings. After the US divided up the land of various Indian reservations as private property of various Indians, many of them agreed to sell that property to whites. (That was, I think, the US's aim in dividing the land.)

We should give local communities the authority to protect forests and ecosystems, but not the authority to sell them or despoil them.