“It’s not a lack of political will, but of vision.” This is how Colombian Dario Mejia Montalvo, president of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues, defines the reluctance of countries to include indigenous proposals in the draft of what could be the new UN biodiversity agreement.
“We were driven off our land by coal miners, and after the climate deal we were driven off by wind power companies,” he says. To prevent the pattern from being repeated with the biodiversity agreement, indigenous organizations advocate a holistic view of environmental protection, which includes their ways of life as part of the conservation strategy.
“It’s not just the land, trees and resources that mean something. Mother Earth is everyone’s home. We are not the owners of the land, nor the guards; we are part of it”, says Colombian Lena Estrada Añokazi, representative Coica (Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin) in the negotiations of the agreement.
“It’s not about not using resources, but using what we need. And it’s not about privatizing and generating profits for a minority. We take care of resources for all of humanity”, she adds.
The new agreement is expected to be signed in December at the COP-15 on biodiversity, which will be chaired by China and hosted by Canada. However, the draft presented on the 26th at the preparatory meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, still leaves open the main questions that define the conservation goals and the conditions of implementation.
Indigenous representatives at the UN Convention on Biodiversity call for indigenous lands to be recognized as a separate category of protected area.
“We are being murdered in the name of conservation,” says Philippine lawyer Jennifer Corpuz of the Kankana-ey Igorot people, citing cases of expulsion of indigenous communities from territories regulated by governments as protected areas.
Just two weeks before the UN meeting, thousands of Maasai people were expelled from their territories by the Tanzanian police to create an environmental reserve dedicated to tourism.
The dichotomy between conservation models also generates conflicts in Brazil. The country foresees both the category of fully protected conservation units, in which human presence is only admitted for visiting or research, and sustainable use, such as extractive reserves, in which it is possible to exploit resources without harming biodiversity.
Although they represent only 5% of the world’s population, indigenous people are responsible for conserving 40% of all protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes in the world, according to a study published in 2018 in the scientific journal Nature.
In Brazil, indigenous lands are still the least affected by deforestation. According to research by Raisg (Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information), 89% of carbon emissions (caused by deforestation and fires) in the Brazilian Amazon occurred outside indigenous lands between 2003 and 2016.
In addition to including indigenous territories as a specific conservation category in the biodiversity agreement, organizations demand their participation in all phases of planning and implementation of projects that affect their territories.
A large part of developing countries even defended in the negotiations that the relationship with indigenous communities should not be guided by an international parameter, but “according to national circumstances” – although free, prior and informed consultation with communities affected by projects and works is provided for in Convention 169 of the ILO (International Labor Organization).
Indigenous organizations consider that they have made progress in the negotiations, such as the mention of guaranteeing the rights and safety of environmental defenders. The texts, however, are still under negotiation and other versions should still be available by December.
“The text still does not address what indigenous peoples are asking for. Many of the elements that were included in Geneva [em outra etapa da negociação]some very positive, are still open for negotiation, which creates a lot of uncertainty”, says Diego Casaes, director of campaigns at the NGO Avaaz.
The concern of indigenous organizations is that a strict proposal to protect biodiversity becomes a threat to communities living in conserved environments, especially when there are financial incentives to remunerate conservation. The establishment of prior consultations as a condition for the implementation of projects seeks to guarantee the consent and bargaining power of local communities.
Another indigenous claim is the direct receipt of resources, without government intermediation.
“Less than 1% of all global funding for combating climate change and protecting biodiversity reaches the defenders of nature,” says Casaes.
However, in the opinion of negotiators from developing countries, demand generates competition between these actors for international resources.
*THE journalist traveled at the invitation of Avaaz.
