By Chris Lang
Indigenous People in Montreal for the UN biodiversity meeting, COP15, are demanding that their rights be included in any agreement. Meanwhile negotiators from the EU, Norway, and Australia are arguing that the words “indigenous territories” should be kept out of the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Chris Chapman, Amnesty International’s Adviser on Indigenous Rights, comments that,
“Any 30×30 deal being negotiated in the final days of COP15 must recognize that conservation is more effective on Indigenous lands than in state-run protected areas. States must include Indigenous peoples’ territories and customary lands and waters as a category of conservation area in any agreement, as called for by the Indigenous Biodiversity Forum.”
Chapman is referring to a statement put out by the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity on 10 December 2022:
International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity
IIFB Public Statement on Target 3
CBD COP 15
Montreal, 10 December 2022 The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) underscores the importance of ensuring a rights-based approach in the implementation of Target 3 of the global biodiversity framework, specifically including “protecting and respecting” our rights.
We reiterate that Target 3 will not be fully realized if our contributions to conservtion are not included as the most effective measure for the protection of Mother Nature. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that our territories, lands and waters exceed the conservation outcomes of protected areas and other state-centric conservation approaches.
Thus, the IIFB urgest parties to include Indigenous Peoples territories and customary lands and waters as a third pathway to recognition beyond protected areas and OECMs.
We urge parties to consider this position in their negotiations of Target 3.
Amnesty International’s Chapman continues by saying that,
“States must also ensure that any agreement addresses human rights violations in protected areas and requires states to respect the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples, including by obtaining their free, prior and informed consent for all actions.
“Negotiators on the 30×30 deal at COP15 should also remove the requirement for a significant proportion of protected areas to be ‘strictly protected’, as the wording could lead to ‘fortress conservation’ methods that forcibly evict human populations from these areas, including Indigenous peoples and other traditional land users who have cultivated the land for generations.”
Earlier in the negotiations in Montreal, The Guardian reported that,
The EU was accused of trying to water down the target by arguing that extractive industries such as mining and drilling should be allowed in protected areas, provided they did not negatively affect biodiversity.
The EU argued for 10% of the 30×30 target to be under “strict protection”, while allowing extractive industries to take place in the remaining 20%. This would be the worst possible outcome – excluding Indigenous Peoples and local communities from vast areas of their lands, allowing extractivism (which is a major driver of biodiversity loss) to take place on an even larger area, and failing to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and territories.
But none of this is a “watering down” of the 30×30 target. Mining is a major threat to protected areas and governments often turn a blind eye to the destruction of protected areas by extractivism. But while protected areas do not protect much, they far too often do exclude Indigenous Peoples. Far from a “watering down”, this is exactly what 30×30 set out to achieve: the biggest land grab the world has ever seen.
Without that picture of the protester wearing a mask of supression, I would share this piece. With that tragic, that multiply tragic picture there, sorry, I cannot!
Trying to develop biodiversity policy in the present system of governance is like asking Titanic passengers to clean their sinks and toilets before getting into a lifeboat. Several changes are pre-requisites to this course of action. A permanent end to WAR is essential before progress can be made on any front.
For that, we need what I call >The Grand Bargainin usufructnot one more sacrifice zoneon someone else’s land far away< (likely stolen from Indigenous Peoples). Observe all that is around you – is that what this planet looks like?
Look, people -WAKE UP! We are living on a small blue planet protected from outer space by very thin atmosphere which we are trying to destroy ASAP. This little planet is spinning at about 1670 km/h at the equator, or about 460 m/second. We are flying around the sun at the speed of almost 30 km/s, or travelling about 2600 km every day. This planet is all we have, all that supports life, and we are at war with Nature and with each other. Enough!
let’s try this one again without botching it!
Trying to develop biodiversity policy in the present system of governance is like asking Titanic passengers to clean their sinks and toilets before getting into a lifeboat. Several changes are pre-requisites to this course of action. A permanent end to WAR is essential before progress can be made on any front.
For that, we need what I call >The Grand Bargain<. Without naming any international bad actors, let us propose to the world that in exchange for disbanding NATO, the Security Council of the UN will be upgraded so that it actually serves its intended purpose. There will be no “permanent members;” all members will be appointed by the General Assembly from a list of nations ranked in order of how well they have provided peace, order and good governance and generally improved living conditions in their countries, during the previous five years. Nations which have instigated wars inside or outside their borders are proscribed. The principal activity of the Security Council will be to promote peace and prohibit all wars in and between nations. We cannot pretend to have a civilization on this small blue planet as long as war is an ever-present option. The Security Council will have the power to call any offending nation to the floor of the General Assembly to explain to the world how they intend to provide peace, order and good governance in lands they control; otherwise, they immediately lose sovereignty and become dependencies of the UN.
Then, having established that sovereignty is not a singular property of a nation but rather an attribute conferred upon it by the consensus of the world community, we can make progress on getting nations to live in usufruct, living on the fruits of the land, rather than tearing it apart for profit. Thus the intended actions of China, for example, would be ruled out, that being their desire to fully “develop” their “Great Western Storehouse,” meaning their intention to mine the Tibet Plateau down to sea-level or below in their quest for world-dominance in mineral production.
Then the next step should be agreeing to not one more sacrifice zone – anywhere on the planet. If we can’t stop creating sacrifice zones in our war against Nature with the concurrent drive for maximizing profit, how can we ever insure that there is space on this planet for evolution to resume? Allowing space for evolution to begin working again is paramount in any effort to enhance biodiversity – how are all the new species supposed to develop that can endure the polluted planet that we are gifting the future? But can there be an end to sacrifice zones, doesn’t that nix our attempts to rip up the planet finding enough lithium etc., to make the world’s desired 8 billion EVs? Well, certainly, that contradiction underlines our need to set Limits to Progress.
Part of the work on ending the creation of sacrifice zones would be the end to subsidies by governments, banks and businesses which subsidize the destruction of the environment. See the Feb. 2022 article https://www.carbonbrief.org/cropped-23-february-2022-world-financing-own-extinction-catastrophic-wildfires-ethanol-emissions/
And no, you can’t “offset” sacrifice zones by saying “we have protected biodiversity in this little spot, to offset our destruction of this other spot.” No, it all has to stop, sorry. Look at this video from NASA and tell me where you can put even one Nature preserve: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/6s0NDJYb
Show me how any offset can improve this mess!
Protecting the environment, Nature and biodiversity is a task for each person, every day, this work can’t all be shoved onto government’s desk in futile attempts to create little spots of biodiversity on someone else’s land far away often stolen from Indigenous Peoples. Observe all that is around you – is that what this planet looks like?
re: “greencentre” (above) – that is not a mask of suppression, it is a mask of respect for others by keeping your own germs to yourself, not contaminating the air that others must breathe, in effect using the atmosphere as your breath-disposal system just as we do with our vehicle exhaust.