Campaign launched to protect 80% of Amazon at key environment summit
Indigenous voices on the environment are finally being heard as Marseille hosts a global biodiversity summit, with a call to protect 80% of the Amazon, as well as a “counter conference” highlighting the conservation movement’s historic violation of people’s rights.
For the first time in its seven-decade history, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is including indigenous peoples as full voting members in their own right, rather than under the NGO category. Dozens of indigenous meetings are happening at the summit – which occurs every four years – with representatives from 23 organisations.
Greater inclusion of indigenous representatives comes as the European “fortress conservation” model, which resulted in vast human rights abuses and an estimated 20 million people displaced from their homelands worldwide since the 19th century, is increasingly being challenged.
Historically, the global conservation movement was based on the idea that protected areas flourish free from human disturbance, but a growing body of evidence shows that indigenous communities are the best at looking after wildlife, and that as much as 80% of the world’s remaining forest biodiversity lies within indigenous peoples’ territories.
