Comment: As talks on a global deal to protect nature begin in Nairobi, Kenya, countries need to create a new conservation designation for Indigenous Peoples’ land
The world is becoming more aware of a sad fact: the deforestation is increasing at a rate and scale that is comparable to nature’s collapse.
Some rainforests are already releasing more carbon dioxide than they absorb, further destabilizing the global climate. At current trends, all primary rainforest in the Congo basin – the world’s second largest rainforest – could be cleared by the end of the century.
Given the grim state of the world’s forests, we need to seize every opportunity to do right with nature.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity summit, or Cop15, relocated to Montreal, Canada, in December this year could be the “Paris moment” for biodiversity, as the 2015 Paris Agreement was for climate.
Montreal will see countries agree to a global framework to stop biodiversity loss for the next decade.
As biodiversity negotiators meet in Nairobi, Kenya this week to prepare for the meeting, they need to recognize a crucial truth: Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and other communities are better at managing their lands that anyone else.
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Data collected across countries and continents consistently shows a better-protected ecosystem and biodiversity when people living in forests are allowed to manage them.
Deforestation industries – whether loggers or agribusiness – are well aware of this. While they clear forests and other local communities, Indigenous Peoples are being displaced and abused.
Participants to the biodiversity Cop15 summit should discuss safeguards for recognising Indigenous Peoples’ rights and roles in conserving natural resources. So far, discussions haven’t included any concrete commitments.
Cop15 must recognize tangible protections for Indigenous Peoples’ rights in order to protect biodiversity ethically and effectively. This should include creating a separate category for Indigenous land that places them at the center of funding and decision-making.
Currently, there exists two types of conservation designation: protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures when conservation is supposedly achieved even though it isn’t the formal objective of land management.
The countries of Kenya should agree to create a third type of land that is fully governed and managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
All protected areas where Indigenous Peoples or local communities live must be fully included in the decision-making process and management of the area.
The threats are not just the chainsaws and bulldozers of multinational companies seeking to extract natural resources, but “fortress conservation”, which closes off land and forests to human activities.
Not only is there a complicated history between forest-dwelling Indigenous Peoples and local communities, but also with traditional conservationists. Unlike traditional conservation NGOs or government-run parks’ administrators, Indigenous Peoples and local communities consider the forest their home.
Fortress conservation is the result of the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ rights from conservation frameworks. This has often led, as has been documented in Central Africa, to the perpetuation of human rights abuses such as rape, torture, killing forest communities by so-called Eco-Guards.
The latest confrontation occurred shortly before the Nairobi talks started. Tanzanian authorities opened fire upon Maasai communities opposed to the demarcation a game reserve. This would ban all human settlements in the area and prohibit grazing.
Creating a game reserve for tourism by violently evicting the land’s inhabitants isn’t “conserving nature.” It’s a renewed form of colonialism.
TanzanianAuthorities seen opening fire on Maasai in Game Reserve dispute
Montreal will soon sign a global agreement for nature, which is an opportunity for us to abandon fortress conservation and embrace the future.
This means that Indigenous Peoples are officially recognized as having rights to their ancestral lands, and natural resources.
Some progress has been made in recent years. Forest communities can now receive formal rights to a forest concession in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But the Congolese government, as well as donors countries, must do more for this option to be available to all communities.
And across the world, there are still many billions of dollars invested in sustaining this problematic “fortress conservation” model.
Being serious about forest community rights means investing far more in the formal process of recognising Indigenous Peoples’ land rights, management, and decision making, and protecting Indigenous knowledge.
Negotiations taking place in Nairobi this week must be a turning point for Indigenous People’s rights in biodiversity conservation. It would be a massive failure of the UN Biodiversity talks to allow NGOs and government agencies as primary beneficiaries of conservation funding.
Cop15 biodiversity summit is the time to lay the foundation for a new system that protects wildlife, forests, and people. It is both just and effective.
Irene Wabiwa BetokoGreenpeace Africa is the international leader in the Congo Basin forest.
Source: Climate Change News
