- Although some outcomes of this year’s U.N. biodiversity conference, or COP16, were viewed by some as historic achievements for Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples, many groups were left disappointed.
- One of the most significant wins was the acknowledgment of Afro-descendants as essential actors in the care and protection of biodiversity, the decision on Article 8(j), and the adoption of the ‘Cali Fund.’
- However, many were disappointed by the failure to reach a consensus on resource mobilization, direct funding for Indigenous peoples and local communities and the lack of progress on the monitoring framework to achieve targets and goals to restore nature.
- Mongabay spoke with several Indigenous delegates attending the conference to gauge their thoughts on the conference.
Despite gridlocked talks over finance and little advancement on key elements on the agenda, this year’s U.N. biodiversity conference, or COP16, was considered a success for some Indigenous peoples and local community (IP and LC) delegates who obtained historic inclusion of their rights within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). However, many groups were also left disappointed due to the lack of progress on resource mobilization and the monitoring framework to achieve the global biodiversity goals and targets.
“The most significant achievement of COP16 was undoubtedly the historic approval of the Article 8(j) subsidiary body,” Wara Iris Ruiz Condori, from the Aymara peoples of Bolivia and advocacy project coordinator at the Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI), told Mongabay. “This milestone marks a momentous step towards the formal recognition of the ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”
After a roughly 12-hour meeting, COP16 was suspended in the early hours of Nov. 2 due to many representatives leaving the conference without a decision on resource mobilization. However, many Indigenous peoples and local communities left pleased with the approval of Article 8(j) and the ‘Cali Fund’. The latter is the first-ever global fund to ensure that the benefits generated through the commercial use of Digital Sequencing Information (DSI) are shared fairly with the people living where the resources were discovered, such as Indigenous peoples.
While the biodiversity framework and the decisions at the conference are not legally binding, delegates cheered the strong language in agreements around inclusion and benefits to Indigenous peoples and local communities.
The much-celebrated Article 8(j)
One of the most significant wins, said Indigenous delegates Mongabay spoke with, was the establishment of a Permanent Subsidiary Body for Article 8(j) and a new program of work. This will allow the delegates to advise and contribute directly to COPs for the first time and set out specific tasks to ensure the “meaningful contribution” of Indigenous peoples and local communities to the CBD’s objectives.
The agreement mandates that parties to the CBD “respect, preserve and maintain” the knowledge of IP and LCs related to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, and to “encourage the equitable sharing of benefits” from this knowledge.
However, as Ruiz points out, “the structure and operational details of this body are still to be defined, a crucial task that will be addressed on the road to COP17, at the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB).”
Jennifer Jing Corpuz, one of the IIFB’s lead negotiators, wrote in a statement that they would have wanted the modus operandi of Article 8(j) to be adopted in the last meeting, but they are committed to working out the details the next time and “ensuring that the new program on Article 8(j) advances without delay.” Detractors of the subsidiary body said they worry it may be an administrative burden.
The National Coordination of Articulation of Rural Black Quilombola Communities (CONAQ) and the Black Communities Process (PCN) celebrated the decision to recognize people of African descent in the text of the CBD, specifically in Article 8(j). In a press statement, they said it’s “an essential step to promote policies that respect and integrate the knowledge of Afro-descendant communities in the preservation of biodiversity.”
A separate COP16 decision also called on parties to incorporate the “contributions of people of African descent” and their knowledge of and connection to their lands in implementing the CBD and the GBF. It “encourages” parties to “facilitate their full and effective participation” in both international agreements and to provide financial support and capacity-building for people of African descent on a voluntary basis.
Esther Ojulari, programs director for the Baobab Center for Innovation in Ethno-Racial, Gender, and Environmental Justice, told Mongabay this was a huge advance in terms of the recognition of Afro-descendant rights at the international level and demonstrates the important connection between environmental justice and racial justice.
However, it did fall short of the full demands of the Afro-descendant movement. The decision recognizes “people of African descent” and not “peoples of African descent” or “Afro-descendant peoples,” a concept which, as Ojulari explained, implies autonomy, self-governed and self-determination.
“The recognition of Afro-descendants as ‘peoples’ would mean the recognition of distinct ethnic groups with a shared history, identity and culture, specific self-governance mechanisms and ancestral ties to territory,” she said. “That’s really important when we’re talking about biodiversity and the management and the sustainable use of resources in collective territories.”
Sharing benefits
In COP15, parties agreed to establish a multilateral mechanism, including a global fund, to share the benefits of using digital sequence information on genetic resources (DSI) more fairly and equitably. This discussion was one of the most keenly anticipated of COP16, as there were still many questions around who would pay to use DSI, how much they would pay, and how this money would be disbursed, among other deliberations.
After lengthy discussions and last-minute text changes, countries agreed to the first-ever global fund, known as the ‘Cali Fund’ to which companies using genetic data “should contribute”, along with a unique multilateral mechanism to support it. Parties agreed that pharmaceutical, biotechnology, animal and plant breeding, and other industries that benefit from genetic data “should” contribute 1% of their profits, or 0.1% of their revenue, to the fund.
“We feel really positive about the outcome,” KatieLee Riddle, from the Rongowhakaata Iwi tribe of New Zealand and co-lead of the IIFB working group on DSI, told Mongabay. “There were a couple of things that we were particularly excited about, like the ability for half of the funds to go to Indigenous peoples on the ground.”
However, Riddle had some concerns about how much of this funding would reach them. This is because either profits or revenue can be used as a metric. “We worry that having the choice between the two different metrics means companies or entities will use the lowest amount possible,” she said.
The monitoring framework
When Mongabay spoke to Indigenous and local community leaders earlier this month about what they hoped to see achieved at COP16, they expressed the need to agree on a system to monitor progress toward achieving the biodiversity framework. This framework needed more details on how to address the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities while meeting global targets, such as the target to protect 30% of land and water by 2030.
The hope was that certain progress indicators (known as traditional knowledge indicators) would be added to the monitoring framework and that the territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities would be a distinct category of conservation areas, separate from protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures.
However, the parties did not agree to traditional knowledge indicators for the monitoring framework. Jorge Acero, a human rights defender and lawyer at Amazon Frontlines, told Mongabay that there was also no progress regarding recognizing Indigenous territories as a distinct form of conservation area.
Finance and resource mobilization
The failure to establish a new funding mechanism to support the implementation of the GBF was a disappointment, said Joan U. Carling, the executive director of the IPRI. This is because it meant developing countries, Indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as Afro-descendant peoples, will continue to protect biodiversity and undertake other critical actions, such as restoration, with little financial support.
Parties at COP16 did not manage to approve a new strategy to help secure at least $200 billion annually by 2030 to support biodiversity initiatives worldwide, which is one of the goals of the GBF. Several governments, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway, pledged an additional $163 million to the Global Biodiversity Fund (GBFF), taking the fund up to $396 million. However, these were far short of meeting the $200B minimum, particularly the larger $700 billion finance gap for biodiversity.
The failure to reach a consensus on resource mobilization meant that parties did not agree to the monitoring framework, a key goal of the conference. It will be taken up, along with the finance decisions, at a continuation of COP16 that will most likely be raised at the CBD’s subsidiary body meetings next year.
The lack of direct funding for Indigenous communities is “both outrageous and simply bad policy,” said Mitch Anderson, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Amazon Frontlines. He told Mongabay there needs to be a “massive shift in both political and financial support for grassroots, Indigenous-led frontlines solutions.”
Justino Piaguaje, an Indigenous Siekopai leader from Ecuador, told Mongabay that going forward, “there needs to be a participatory dialogue, an intercultural dialogue where we can also express our criteria and approaches, and we also need to have direct access to financial resources.”
This criticism isn’t only found within IP and LC circles. By the end of the summit, only 44 out of 196 parties, 22%, had submitted new biodiversity plans (NBSAPs) to meet the global biodiversity framework’s goals and targets. Some countries, such as Brazil and Colombia, said the timeframe was insufficient, while others blamed the lack of timely funding available.
Banner image: Indigenous delegates at the COP16 U.N. biodiversity conference’s last plenary on Nov. 1. Image by UN biodiversity via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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