Transforming conservation

This paper is number 1 of the briefing series Transforming Conservation: from conflict to justice.

We believe that the form which conservation work takes requires a radical, root and branch transformation to put an end to the repeated, serious and systematic violations of the human rights of indigenous peoples and of local communities.

Read the paper in: Français, English, Bahasa Indonesia, Español 

Forest Peoples Programme and partners have encountered and documented human rights violations against indigenous peoples and local communities associated with conservation over the course of decades of work. There have been moments when progress in this area has been made (e.g., the 2003 Durban Accord and the adoption of social policies by conservation agencies). However, changes to practice on the ground have too often been limited or quickly reversed, despite repeated calls by human rights organisations over decades. These issues are widely known, they cannot be ignored. They do not require further investigation: they require concerted action.

We reject any form of conservation which accepts human rights violations as a cost of achieving conservation outcomes and which sees indigenous peoples as a threat to biodiversity and the environment. Instead, we need to focus on creating the enabling conditions for indigenous peoples and communities with collective ties to their resources to be able to sustain and be sustained by the ecological integrity of their lands, including through the recognition of fundamental rights in conservation practice and in national laws and policies.

Decades of work has shown that the creation of government or privately managed protected areas has too often seen the dispossession of indigenous peoples and local communities of their ancestral and collective territories and resources, a phenomenon that continues today. The zoning of such areas as externally protected, a persistent practice that dates back to colonial times, has in many instances caused catastrophic cultural, physical and material harms to affected communities. Those charged with protecting these areas (‘eco-guards’) have been complicit in abuses, while the illegal wildlife trade has been used to justify increasingly militarized approaches which threaten indigenous peoples and local communities’ rights to access their resources.

Key points:

Conservation agencies and those who fund them should:

1. Ensure that protection of human rights is integrated into conservation management, strategy and programmes.  
2. Avoid and disinvest from conservation programmes that pose a risk of human rights abuses.  
3. Actively support the full protection of indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ customary land and resource rights.  
4. Recognise indigenous peoples and communities as key actors in securing biodiversity.  
5. Ensure there are effective avenues for redress for past and future actions that do not meet the above criteria.

About this briefing series:

In 2003, at the 5th World Parks Congress in Durban, the conservation world made commitments to return lands to  indigenous peoples that had been turned into protected areas without their consent, and to only establish new protected areas with their full consent and involvement. Those commitments have not been realised. This series offers case studies, testimony, research, and analysis from FPP and from our partners that examine the current state of play of the relationship between conservation and indigenous peoples, and local communities with collective ties to their lands. It will expose challenges and injustices linked to conservation operations, showcase practical, positive ways forward for the care of lands and ecosystems, led by indigenous peoples and local communities themselves, and reflect on pathways to just and equitable conservation more broadly.