Human rights abuses against Indigenous Peoples and the proposed “30×30” target

The proposed target to protect 30% of the earth’s land and water is dominating the UN biodiversity meeting in Montreal. The text of the Global Biodiversity Framework, of which the “30×30” target is just one part, is supposed to be completed over the weekend of 17 December 2022. The current draft has more than 700 square brackets. Carbon Brief has a detailed overview of the progress (or lack of it) in the negotiations leading up to and at Montreal.

Last week, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that almost two-thirds of countries had already agreed to the 30×30 target.

And on 11 December 2022, a group of institutional investors announced Nature Action 100, which will focus on “driving greater corporate ambition and action to reduce nature and biodiversity loss”.

Scratching the surface of this initiative reveals that the World Bank is lurking in the background. In June 2021, the Bank wrote on its website, “Proposals for a ‘Nature Action 100’ have been put forward by the World Bank (including in the Mobilizing Private Finance for Nature report) and others, and the structure for such an initiative is taking shape.”

The same World Bank that is so cosy with the financial institutions and corporations that are destroying the planet’s biodiversity estimates in a 2008 report that “Traditional indigenous territories encompass up to 22 percent of the world’s land surface and they coincide with areas that hold 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity.”

Before COP15 started in Montreal, Indigenous People from around the world signed on to a letter outlining their concerns with the 30×30 target. The letter was coordinated by Project Expedite Justice, Indigenous partners, and other allied organisations.

“While we welcome the pursuit of solutions to mitigate climate change and reduce the loss of wildlife and biodiversity,” the letter states, “the 30×30 proposed target as currently drafted will likely lead to permanent displacement and threaten the existence of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.”

The letter gives the example of the recent brutal evictions of the Maasai from their ancestral territory in Tanzania.

The letter follows a report by Project Expedite Justice, published in June 2022, that documents human rights abuses against Indigenous Peoples in protected areas worldwide. The report is titled “Trapped Outside the Conservation Fortress” and investigates 10 protected areas. The report finds almost identical problems in each, including: “forced displacements, losses of ancestral lands, beatings, sexual violence, looting, extrajudicial killings, and torching of property, often perpetrated by empowered, overzealous, and militarized law enforcement personnel and park rangers”.

The letter is available on Project Expedite Justice’s website and is posted in full below:

Sign-on Letter: Indigenous peoples’ Concerns about the 30×30 Target

December 6, 2022

Re: Human Rights Abuses Against Indigenous Peoples and the Proposed “30×30” Target

Dear Participants of the UN Biodiversity Conference and Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema,

As you gather with country representatives from around the world for the UN Biodiversity Conference this week and consider the 30×30 proposed target to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and seas by 2030, we, Indigenous Peoples from across the globe, urge you to commit to a genuine Indigenous-centered and human rights-based approach to conservation, taking into consideration our rights as ancestral stewards of these lands and waters.

While we welcome the pursuit of solutions to mitigate climate change and reduce the loss of wildlife and biodiversity, the 30×30 proposed target as currently drafted will likely lead to permanent displacement and threaten the existence of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

The creation and expansion of “protected areas” for conservation purposes implementing the “fortress conservation” model keeps Indigenous Peoples from freely and safely accessing our sacred, ancestral territories, burial sites, and traditional hunting and foraging grounds.¹

Ms. Mrema is acutely aware of how land dispossession is impacting the Maasai people who have been forcefully evicted from their ancestral homes under the guise of conservation in her home country of Tanzania. In the Ngorongoro District, an eviction has endangered the lives and livelihoods of 150,000 Maasai, using tear gas and live ammunition as enforcement. This is one of many examples where Indigenous Peoples are excluded from the decision-making process when creating protected areas.

In addition to forced displacements, eco-guards in protected areas perpetrate sexual violence, looting, extrajudicial killings, and destruction of property. All of this is extensively documented in several reports, including Project Expedite Justice’s “Trapped Outside the Conservation Fortress”; World Wildlife Fund’s “Embedding Human Rights in Nature Conservation: From Intent to Action”;² and Survival International’s “How Will We Survive?”.

The 30×30 policy (Target 3 in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework) threatens our cultural and spiritual traditions as stewards of Earth’s biodiversity since the beginning of time.

As the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, José Francisco Calí Tzay, wrote to the UN General Assembly in his latest annual report: “[f]or centuries, Indigenous peoples’ scientific knowledge, land tenure systems and sustainable management of resources have preserved and conserved the planet. Respect for Indigenous peoples’ collective rights is, therefore, a fundamental step towards the sustainable and effective achievement of conservation goals.”

We echo his remark that: “[r]eal drivers of biodiversity decline, such as industrialization, overconsumption and climate change, must be addressed. Simply enlarging the global protected area surface without ensuring the rights of indigenous peoples dependent on those areas is not the solution.”

It is undisputed that Indigenous-led conservation solutions have and will continue to deliver better results than approaches that disregard our land and collective rights. Rhetoric is not enough. Conservation must center on and include Indigenous Peoples in order to succeed.

Specifically, the signatories set forth below, in representing Indigenous Peoples worldwide, call for the following principles to be central to your decision-making as you discuss the 30×30 proposed target at the UN Biodiversity Conference:

1. We, Indigenous Peoples, must maintain or secure ownership of our land, territory, and natural resources.

2. We, Indigenous Peoples, must be fully included as rights holders and peer stakeholders with equal decision-making authority.

3. We, Indigenous Peoples, must not experience any violence as part of the enforcement of conservation policies.

We appreciate that the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework acknowledges Indigenous Peoples in its purpose statement, theory of change, and action goals, as well as the protection of our “customary sustainable use” of land (Target 9), the inclusion of our knowledge (Target 20), and our participation in decision-making (Target 21). Nonetheless, these issues must be included in the core of the 30×30 policy and the protected areas’ design and implementation.

If Indigenous Peoples do not maintain or secure ownership of our land nor have equal authority in the decision-making process, the UN’s 30×30 policy may be the biggest land grab in history and further threaten the physical and cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

Thank you for your consideration of this paramount matter.
Sincerely,

Indigenous Peoples
Adélard Bineza Masaka, FACOB, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Bhanu Tatak, Indigenous Research and Advocacy Dibang, India
Chebet Mungech, Coordinator Benet lobby Group, Uganda
Delcasse Lukumbu, Lucha, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Heart of Love Beacon for Vulnerable Communities Uganda, Uganda
IRAD, India
Kipsang, Uganda
Monica Magnusson, Belize
Mustafa Mugasa, FACOB, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Nahele, United States
National Indigenous Women’s Federation, Nepal
Phnom Thano, Independent Indigenous Journalist, Thailand
R. Múkaro Agüeibaná Borrero, United Confederation of Taíno People, Caribbean
Ron Lameman, Board President, International Indian Treaty Council, Canada
Schaghticoke First Nations, United States
Tai Pellicier, Caribbean Amerindian Development Organization, Caribbean
Ushimi, Eya Collective, India

Other Signatories
Abby Nelson
Alice Vittoria
Arif Jamal
Bram Büscher, Wageningen University
Celeste Alexander
Centre d’Actions pour le Développement
Chris Lang, REDD-Monitor.org
Comptoir Juridique Junior
Dralp Deborah S. Rogers, President, Initiative for Equality
Dr Jerome Lewis, Department of Anthropology, University College London
Dr Lewis Daly, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University College London
Dr Mordecai Ogada, Director Conservation Solutions Afrika
Grace Ruvimbo Chirenje
Hannah Gibbs, ExCiteS, University College London
Katherine Homewood, Professor of Human Ecology, Department of Anthropology, University
College London
M-A Moreau, University College London
Marcos Moreu, University College London
Marie-Annick Moreau
Merab Ingabire, Solidarity Uganda
Nico LEWIS
Rafael Morais Chiaravalloti, University College London
Roy Ashton, PhD Researcher (hunters and gatherers)
Shankar Limbu, Lawyers’ Association for Human Rights of Nepalese Indigenous Peoples
Sheina Lew-Levy
Toyin Agbetu, Lecturer in Social and Political Anthropology, University College London

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1. “Fortress conservation is a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance. Fortress, or protectionist, conservation assumes that local people use natural resources in irrational and destructive ways, and as a result, cause biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. Protected areas following the fortress model can be characterized by three principles: local people dependent on the natural resource base are excluded; enforcement is implemented by park rangers patrolling the boundaries, using a “fines and fences” approach to ensure compliance; and only tourism, safari hunting, and scientific research are considered as appropriate uses within protected areas. Because local people are labeled as criminals, poachers, and squatters on lands they have occupied for decades or centuries, they tend to be antagonistic toward fortress-style conservation initiatives and less likely to support the conservation goals”, see Sage Encyclopedia of Environment and Society, Paul Robins, 2007, available at https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/environment/n432.xml.

2. This report was commissioned by WWF after serious accusations of human rights abuses in protected areas where WWF operates were uncovered by Buzzfeed news in 2019. See https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-world-wide-fund-nature-parks-torture-death; https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/wwf-executives-marco-lambertini-warned-abuse and https://www.buzzfeednews.com/collection/wwfsecretwar. The report provides credible evidence of the occurrence of the abuses and the operation of fortress conservation.