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	To conserve nature, protect human rights by David Boyd, John Knox, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz UN Office for Human Rights, agencies   Aug. 2021   Human rights must be at heart of UN plan to save planet, says David Boyd - UN special rapporteur on human rights and environment.   The UN’s draft plan to preserve and protect nature must be amended to put human rights at its centre if we are to ensure the future of life on our planet, David Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and environment, said today.   “Leaving human rights on the periphery is simply not an option, because rights-based conservation is the most effective, efficient, and equitable path forward to safeguarding the planet,” he said. “I urge Member States to put human rights at the heart of the new Global Biodiversity Framework.”   Boyd made the call ahead of an October conference in China, where representatives of 190 governments will finalise the UN Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, addressing threats to biodiversity, human well-being and the future of life on Earth.   “States must depart from a ‘conservation as usual’ approach in order to save biodiversity and ensure the fulfilment of human rights for all,” said Boyd.   “A more inclusive, just and sustainable approach to safeguarding and restoring biodiversity is an obligation, not an option.”   The Kunming biodiversity summit will work on the draft framework released in July by the Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It aims to establish a “world living in harmony with nature” by 2050, in part by protecting at least 30 percent of the planet and placing at least 20 percent under restoration by 2030.   “This new framework is of vital importance because accelerated efforts to expand protected areas have unfortunately proven insufficient to stop or even slow the tidal wave of environmental destruction sweeping the planet,” said Boyd.   The rapid expansion of protected areas to cover 30 percent of Earth’s lands and waters is essential to conserving biodiversity, Boyd said, but must not be achieved at the expense of further human rights violations against indigenous peoples and other rural people.   He said special attention must be paid to the rights of indigenous peoples, people of African descendant, local communities, peasants, rural women and rural youth, none of whom are adequately prioritized in the current draft despite recent improvements.   These individuals and groups “must be acknowledged as key partners in protecting and restoring nature,” Boyd said.   “Their human, land and tenure rights, knowledge, and conservation contributions must be recognized, respected, and supported.”   He cautioned against “fortress conservation” approaches aimed at restoring “pristine wilderness” free from human inhabitants, saying this approach has had devastating human rights impacts on communities living in targeted areas, including indigenous peoples and other rural dwellers.   The current draft Framework fails to mention human rights, “overlooking the fundamental fact that all human rights ultimately depend on a healthy biosphere” Boyd said.   “States must improve the draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework by guaranteeing that rights-based approaches are obligatory in all actions to conserve, restore, and share the benefits of biodiversity, including conservation financing.   “It is also imperative that the Framework acknowledges that everyone, everywhere, has the right to live in a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, a right which includes healthy ecosystems and biodiversity,” he said.   * Expanding on his report to the UN General Assembly in October 2020, “Human Rights Depend on a Healthy Biosphere”, Boyd has now developed a policy brief calling for a more inclusive, just and sustainable approach to safeguarding and restoring biodiversity, and outlining the human rights costs and limited efficacy of exclusionary conservation.   http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Environment/SREnvironment/policy-briefing-1.pdf   June 2021   To conserve nature, protect human rights, write John Knox, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz.   Governments are currently discussing an international plan to conserve nature, which will chart a course for the next decade. The stakes could not be higher: one million species face extinction, so the future of life on this planet literally depends on getting conservation right.   The part of the draft plan that has received most attention is the 30x30 target, which calls for the expansion of land and marine conserved areas to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 - more than doubling the extent of areas designated for conservation.   Many governments have expressed support, and the United States just published its 30x30 plan. But the 30x30 target is just one element of a comprehensive Global Biodiversity Framework, to be adopted in October at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).   This isn’t the first attempt at a global plan to save nature. In 2010, the CBD Parties agreed on 20 targets to be met by 2020. That plan utterly failed: none of the targets were fully met, and only six even partially met.   Unfortunately, as Indigenous and other organizations have pointed out, the current plan is on course to repeat the mistake that undermined past efforts: failing to recognize that the best way to protect nature is to protect the human rights of those who live there.   Remaining natural ecosystems are found largely on the lands of Indigenous peoples, who have often proved to be better than governments at protecting against deforestation and the loss of biodiversity. But they are under assault from the same forces destroying nature, including land grabbing, logging, mining, and poaching.   When they try to protect their ways of life, they face harassment, violence, and even death. Of the 331 human rights defenders killed in 2020, more than two-thirds were defenders of Indigenous, land, or environmental rights.   Rather than strengthen the rights of these environmental defenders in their traditional lands, many governments have historically seen the ideal national park as one without human beings. They have often violently expelled their inhabitants, treating them as enemies rather than allies.   Today, governments and conservation organizations say that they reject exclusionary conservation, but many protected areas continue to exclude their original inhabitants. When they return to their ancestral homes, park rangers arrest them - or worse.   In the last two years, reports described allegations that rangers in Africa and Asia committed grave abuses against local communities, including murder, rape, and torture.   Many of the rangers were paid and equipped by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and, indirectly, by its donors. The allegations led to several investigations, including one by an independent expert panel commissioned by WWF, in which one of us (John Knox) participated.   In November, the panel reported that WWF has supported rangers for years despite knowing of the alleged abuses, and that it has often failed to meet its own human rights standards. Its failures have stemmed in large part from its lack of experts in human rights, including Indigenous people themselves.   In its response, WWF did not apologize or accept responsibility, but it did promise to appoint an Ombudsperson (starting in August) and adopt a risk assessment process modeled on that of the World Bank (which opened for public consultation this month).   However, WWF did not commit to adding the expert staff necessary to implement effective protections against abuses. And it rejected the panel’s recommendation to have at least one Indigenous person on its board.   WWF is not unique. The failure to integrate human rights runs throughout international conservation. Recent investigations by the US government and the UN Development Programme concluded that they, too, have failed to follow safeguards to ensure that their conservation funds do not contribute to human rights violations.   The draft Global Biodiversity Framework says, correctly, that transformational change is needed. For it to occur, governments must center the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities throughout the Framework, including the 30x30 target.   That means that, at a minimum, protected areas and other conservation initiatives must recognize and respect the title, tenure, access, and management rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities in their collective lands and territories, including the right of free, prior, and informed consent to any actions that affect them.   Rangers must be trained to international standards and subject to effective review and accountability. Local residents must have access to independent mechanisms that can receive complaints of, and provide remedies for, violations. Park authorities and conservation organizations must report publicly on how they are meeting human rights norms.   Funding for conservation projects should flow only if these baseline standards are met. And donors should provide far more support directly to Indigenous and local conservation organizations.   In short, to conserve nature, governments must first protect the rights of those who are on the front lines of conservation.   * John Knox, a professor at Wake Forest University, was the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2012 to 2018. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, who is a member of the Kankana-ey-Igorot people in the Philippines, was the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples from 2014 to 2020.   Three other current and former UN Special Rapporteurs have also signed on to this article: David Boyd, the current Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment; Mary Lawlor, the current Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders; and Michel Forst, the former Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders. Published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit the related web page
	Territories of life: 2021 Report by ICCA Consortium, agencies   June 2021   The ICCA Consortium presented the “Territories of life: 2021 Report ” in May, a publication with 17 examples of territories and areas conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities from different regions around the globe.   It includes some national and regional analyses about the state of territories of life, plus a global spatial analysis with the best available information to date of the potential extent of the world’s lands and nature conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities and the overlap with areas with high biodiversity conservation value, among other things.   The report was launched in the week of International Day for Biological Diversity celebrations, aiming to call on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Parties to take its findings into account while negotiating the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.   During the presentation, Teddy Baguilat Jr, President of the ICCA Consortium, pointed out the important role Indigenous peoples and local communities play in conservation.   “The ICCA Consortium’s new report on territories of life adds to the evidence that Indigenous peoples and local communities are so central to sustaining the diversity of life on Earth that it would be impossible to address the interlinked biodiversity and climate crises without them,” said Baguilat.   To illustrate how effective Indigenous peoples and local communities governance systems are, Salatou Sambou, member of the Kawawana territory of life in Senegal and ICCA Consortium Regional Coordinator for West Africa, mentioned how a fishermen’s association in Casamance got organised with the community to protect and restore their territory of life by creating a self-determined zoning system to regulate the use of land and water for their sustenance.   “In recent years, we have seen a lot of fish again… We have started to share the benefits and we know that there is good food in quality and quantity and a lot of improvement in the households,” Sambou said about the success of the first ICCA recognised by the Government of Senegal, which covers 9,665 hectares.   As stated by the CBD Executive Secretary, Elizabeth Mrema, in a video message recorded for the occasion, “Indigenous governance and management systems offer new ways to envision realistic and truly transformative governance for biodiversity” and therefore it’s time to embrace this also as a solution to biodiversity degradation.   The ICCA Consortium also presented some recommendations and opportunities for action that policy-makers should take into account for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.   Ameyali Ramos, International Policy Coordinator of the ICCA Consortium, highlighted the need to focus on halting threats to and violence against Indigenous peoples and local communities and their territories of life; recognising and upholding human rights in general and the specific rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities; and supporting communities’ self-determined initiatives to strengthen and sustain themselves and their territories.   “Human rights must be placed at the heart of the post-2020 framework. Certain targets must at minimum include safeguards to prevent human rights violations,” Ramos underscored.   On a similar note, Tupac Viteri Gualinga, president of the Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon, mentioned that “the lack of legal guarantees in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the expropriation of territories by protected areas and extractive industries constitute a violation of our rights,” which is why the Kichwa people of Sarayaku have declared their territory of life as “Kawsak Sacha” or “Living Forest” and a subject and holder of rights.   The important role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation is a fact and the global spatial analysis, which was developed by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and ICCA Consortium for this report, gives some key figures to help us understand this.   Neville Ash, Director of UNEP-WCMC, explained it briefly: “Around one-fifth of the world’s land area is contained within potential territories of life, and it includes one-fifth of key biodiversity areas on land. If these potential areas were recognised for their contribution to conservation alongside existing conserved and protected areas, it would equate to around one-third of the world’s land.”   Ash highlighted the fact that Indigenous peoples and local communities who are governing, managing and conserving at least half of this area are not recognised or supported, so “there’s a clear opportunity in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework to recognise their contribution to conservation and ensure that the rights for the use of this land is safeguarded.”   http://report.territoriesoflife.org/   * The ICCA Consortium is an international association dedicated to promoting the appropriate recognition of and support to ICCAs (territories and areas conserved by indigenous peoples and local communities) in the regional, national and global arena.   http://localbiodiversityoutlooks.net/case-studies-listing/ http://www.forestpeoples.org/en/local-biodiversity-outlooks-2-digital-edition-world-wildlife-day Visit the related web page
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