News:  IMPACT Kenya Host International Workshop on Advancing Rights and Equity in Area-Based Conservation

20 March, 2024

With the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities were centred in biodiversity policy in a ground-breaking way. The entire Framework commits to adopting a human rights-based approach and in specific targets, the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities are highlighted again. This is the case in Target 3 (the so-called ‘conservation target’) which insists that the expansion of areas recognised as conserved happens “respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local community, including over their traditional territories” and recognises that these territories can be, themselves, part of the answer for how to expand conservation.

Seeking to address how these rights can be advanced in area-based conservation, and how the equally crucial commitment to ‘equitable governance’ across all conservation areas can be met, the Forest Peoples Programme co-convened a major international workshop in January 2024 on Advancing Rights and Equity in Area-based Conservation, hosted by IMPACT Kenya, a Maasai organisation, and held in Nanyuki, in Kenya. The workshop was convened together with a wide range of partners, including IUCN, and two of its commissions (IUCN WCPA, IUCN CEESP), the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, the ICCA Consortium, IMPACT Kenya and the International Institute for Education and Development.

This highly collaborative approach was taken to ensure diversity of perspectives and voices in the room and brought together 47 people from across 24 countries, working in two languages throughout the workshop. Individuals present represented Indigenous Peoples’ networks and organisations from across Asia, Latin America and Africa, human rights organisations specialising in land and resource rights, conservation organisation staff from global policy teams and from specific protected area sites, community conservation initiatives, UN agencies (both CBD and UNEP), major conservation funders and advocacy groups.

The workshop reviewed opportunities to advance the recognition of rights and advance equity in area-based conservation, across different contexts and models and with specific reference to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A broad-based road map of potential and committed actions was established at the workshop that identifies key arenas for action, from financing, through discourse change and improving redress where things go wrong (among many others). The workshop report (forth coming) details significant commitments to advance rights and equity in the work being done by co-convening organisations and other participants across these action areas.