More than 100 Indigenous leaders from across the world are gathering at the global Indigenous peoples’ summit at the IUCN World Conservation Congress that begins Oct. 8 in Abu Dhabi.
The summit aims to set priorities and commitments for the broader conservation community, highlighting Indigenous peoples’ effective participation in environmental negotiations, leadership and action.
IUCN director-general Grethel Aguilar told Mongabay by email that the summit provides opportunities for direct engagement with stakeholders and donors at the local, national and international levels, which will help strengthen investments in Indigenous leadership, knowledge and conservation practices. “The summit is an affirmation that Indigenous peoples are not peripheral stakeholders, but rightful stewards of life on Earth.”
The summit will help ensure that global commitments on biodiversity and climate align with Indigenous stewardship of lands and territories. The first ever Indigenous peoples’ pavilion will be held at the summit. The pavilion aims to bring people together to share Indigenous knowledge, conservation practices, community-led projects and intergenerational leadership.
“The pavilion also opens spaces for leaders to have in-depth dialogues and influence the climate negotiations at COP30 [U.N. climate conference] in Brazil this year,” Aguilar said.
The IUCN summit builds on the achievements of the 2021 IUCN Global Indigenous Agenda (GIA), which called for the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights, leadership and governance over their resources and territories.
Aguilar said the GIA has helped advance the integration of Indigenous knowledge into conservation and climate solutions by investing directly in Indigenous-led conservation through the Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Programme Portfolio. That investment helped place Indigenous peoples in positions to make decisions and supported Indigenous-led organizations to build partnerships with the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.
“In the past four years, we have scaled up land tenure security by supporting communal land titling for over 117,532 hectares [290,428 acres] through the PODONG Indigenous Peoples Initiative,” Aguilar said. “IUCN partnering with Indigenous Peoples organization members, co-designing and co-developing the initiative, was also a major step in achieving the Marseille manifesto, which was the main outcome document of the 2021 IUCN congress.”
The manifesto set out a clear vision for recognizing Indigenous rights and leadership in conservation. The Indigenous People’s Summit builds on that legacy to turn the vision into action.
However, Joan Carling, executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI) told Mongabay in a video call that more concrete actions are needed to protect Indigenous environmental defenders and hold agribusiness and extractive industries accountable for aggression and deforestation.
Carling said the summit could be a game changer if it results in hands-on solutions to tackle the actual drivers of environmental loss and degradation.
Banner image: Indigenous peoples in the Amazon have insisted on the urgency of having their voice and vote taken into account in biodiversity negotiations. Image courtesy of U.N. Biodiversity.
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