Plan to displace 300 million Indigenous people to be discussed at Joe Biden’s virtual summit

‘This is the biggest land grab in world history,’ says head of conservation campaign. Charlie Jaay reports

Indigenous groups are the best guardians of nature and are key to protecting biodiversity (AFP via Getty)

A plan that could reduce 300 million people to landless poverty is expected to be discussed at President Biden’s virtual Leaders’ Summit on Climate this week, and to be agreed at the COP15 summit in China in October.

Fiore Longo of Survival, an organisation that fights for indigenous rights, said: “The plan for 30 per cent by 2030 is the biggest land grab in world history and it will reduce hundreds of millions of people to landless poverty. That’s why Survival is pushing against it. It’s commonly known that indigenous peoples are the best guardians of nature, that they’re an essential part of human diversity that is key to protecting biodiversity. But big conservation NGOs continue to ignore this and push for protected areas. They claim it will mitigate climate change and save our environment, but they’re wrong. It is vital that we stop evicting indigenous peoples from the lands they manage, and start recognising their rights.”

New research has shown that only three percent of the earth’s land is ecologically intact, and this has a huge implications on biodiversity.

In an attempt to bring the rapid loss of biodiversity around the globe to an end, member states of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), committed to a number of targets, including those that called for placing 17 per cent of the world’s terrestrial, and 10 per cent of the world’s marine areas within protected areas by 2020. The Campaign for Nature, which works in partnership with the National Geographic Society and a coalition of more than 100 worldwide conservation organisations – and is funded by the Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss – has now proposed 30x30, which is expected to be agreed upon later this year, and 50 per cent of the planet as protected areas by 2050.

Governments across the world are increasingly setting aside land to protect habitats and wildlife, in the name of conservation, often with a great deal of western aid, but there is an immense human cost to this. Indigenous peoples are regularly being evicted and abused, and even killed as a result of many of these strict conservation models that are now prevalent in many parts of the world.

Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, allows them to give or withhold consent to a project that may affect them or their territories, and to negotiate the conditions under which the project will be designed, implemented, monitored and evaluated. However, these protected areas have typically been created without adhering to FPIC or consultation of these communities, and are then managed as though they are wilderness areas and those living on the lands are evicted or displaced.

President Biden wants the United States and other leading nations to turn 30 per cent of the world’s land into protected areas (AP)

Rainforest Foundation UK protects the world’s rainforests by supporting and empowering global communities and the indigenous people who live in them.

Joe Eisen, executive director Rainforest Foundation UK, said: “While 30x30, in theory, allows for community-led conservation, in its current form it is more likely to lead to more land grabs, the further impoverishment of some of the world’s poorest people and be used to justify environmental destruction and climate inaction elsewhere. We need a new approach that puts social justice at the heart of environmental protection.  

“We are calling for an urgent and independent review of the effectiveness and impacts of existing protected areas, clear and ambitious commitments to increase recognition of local and indigenous lands as well as a new rating system for protected areas to ensure they do not violate the rights of traditional environmental stewards.” 

“There are countless conservation related land conflicts and human rights abuses linked to the expansion of militarised protected areas. Through our research in the Congo Basin, where we do a lot of work, we’ve found this violence to be systemic with this model of conservation. It’s not a one off. It doesn’t work for the people who live and depend on these areas, in social or biodiversity terms.

“These protected areas are created without consent, and the Indigenous population is then either evicted or displaced, and if they dare enter these areas, or even their periphery, then they are at the mercy of eco-guards. This is the prevailing model,” he said. 

Nature- based solutions (NBS) are currently being promoted as the way to counterbalance greenhouse gas emissions and help combat climate change. By preserving forests and habitats, it is hoped that carbon dioxide will be absorbed enough to halt the climate crisis. However, critics are questioning the possibility that this can be carried out successfully in the time scale available, and also point out that these NBS do nothing to tackle global warming, but actually encourage it by providing a rationale for polluting countries and corporations such as oil companies in the global north to offset their emissions and carry on with “business as usual”, while fossil fuels are burnt and carbon dioxide emitted, doing nothing to prevent the climate crisis.

Joshua Castellino, executive director of Minority Rights Group International, and a professor of law at Middlesex University London, said: “We are facing an environmental crisis because our commercial activities are destroying the planet, but there are differing opinions to how we should go about restoring its important biodiversity.

“There’s no scientific evidence that this will occur if 30 per cent of land goes back to wilderness but the other 70 per cent sees no changes and it’s business as usual.

People in the Congo Basin could be forced out of their homes to expand the size of protected areas (AFP via Getty)

“Also we need to think how this wilderness would be maintained. Protected areas have been used by many colonial powers all through Africa and Asia, usually for hunting reserves. So, the legacy of protected areas is one that comes from very powerful people deciding to keep a piece of land for themselves – is that going to be useful in protecting biodiversity?” he said.

“This 30x30 zone will give Indigenous lands to the state, who doesn’t have such a harmonious tradition. This will come about because we can’t be bothered to stop the emissions out of New York or London, Paris or Berlin, so the people in the Congo Basin can pay for it!” he said.

A great deal depends on this 30x30 target, in terms of shaping conservation for the next decade, as to whether we will see this conservation model continue, or if we will see approaches that empower local and indigenous communities to protect their rainforest home.