From the Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), with the support of Brot für die Welt and Wetlands International, we held the webinar “Territorios de Vida,” a space for exchange dedicated to sharing lessons learned about the registration process for Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (TICCA), and to showcasing territorial experiences and the role of communities in nature conservation.

The event featured Alfredo Casimiro, a representative of the Red Torna Lickana of the Atacama People, a Territory of Life located in the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc basin in Salta province, Argentina, and Sol Fernandez, program officer at the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and a representative of the TICCA Registry.

During the presentation, Alfredo Casimiro shared the Red Torna Lickana’s experience in the process of registering the first TICCA in Argentina and highlighted the value of this tool for strengthening community organization and the defense of the high-Andean wetlands where they live: “We made the decision to register in this space. Today it’s a very important political and cultural tool to keep fighting for indigenous communities, which is our goal,” he noted.

Through collective work, the indigenous communities of the Red Torna Lickana carried out the documentation and systematization of their Territory of Life, as well as their own forms of organization and community governance. Alfredo especially emphasized the importance of recovering, sharing, and recording the knowledge that the communities themselves hold about their territory: “It really encouraged the young people, it opened our minds a lot… making a map with our animals and our plants, the sacred sites, ancestral medicine. We got the young people involved.”

In this context, Vanina Corral, moderator of the event and head of FARN’s Environmental Policy area, the organization that supported the ICCA registration process in Argentina, noted: “Territories of Life show that conservation doesn’t begin with a registry. It exists because communities have sustained their own systems of governance and territorial management for generations. The TICCA Registry is an opportunity to make these experiences visible and to strengthen them.“

For her part, Sol Fernández explained that behind every TICCA Registration lies a collective process of reflection, consultation, and knowledge recovery, in which the communities themselves decide what information to share, how to share it, and for what purposes. In this regard, she noted: “We understand the TICCA Registry as a political and cultural tool to give visibility to their knowledge and to allow communities to use this platform in whatever way they consider most useful for their own processes.”

The webinar offered a firsthand look at a pioneering experience in Argentina and created a space for exchange to reflect on the importance of recognizing and strengthening the forms of governance and community management that sustain Territories of Life. The event also served as a starting point for organizations, local communities, and indigenous peoples from different parts of the world interested in beginning an TICCA registration process to connect directly with the experiences of those who have already walked that path, complementing these lessons with the perspective of a Registry representative.