Countries strike historic deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030

Indigenous rights

The agreement puts the rights and knowledge of Indigenous communities at the heart of the deal, and acknowledges that they act as vital environmental stewards, accounting for just 5% of the global population while protecting 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. Indigenous peoples are mentioned 18 times throughout the agreed targets, which some activists hailed as an historic victory.

Others, however, claim that the agreement falls short of explicitly recognising Indigenous peoples’ lands and territories as a separate category of conserved area which, they argue, ultimately threatens their rights.

According to Chris Chapman, Amnesty International’s Indigenous rights adviser, this would protect them from the predations they often experience in areas such as state-run national parks. “Consequently, states have failed to fully recognise Indigenous peoples’ immense contribution to conserving biodiversity, putting them at greater risk of human rights violations,” he said.

Transforming harmful subsidies

The deal acknowledged that some US$1.8 trillion is spent every year on government subsidies that contribute to global warming and the extinction of wildlife, and which have led to failures on existing biodiversity targets. The COP15 agreement commits all signatories to making a change, although what that will look like in practice is unclear.

New disclosure commitments for businesses

Under the deal, governments must ensure that large and transnational companies publicly disclose their “risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity”. According to the UN, around half of global GDP is dependent on the healthy functioning of the natural world, which means the loss of biodiversity is becoming an increasingly critical business risk. As such, this disclosure obligation could represent the beginnings of significant changes in business practices.

A path forward for digital biopiracy

Digital sequence information (DSI) is yet to enter mainstream narratives, but its controversies are such that it’s been given attention in the COP15 agreement. DSI refers to the digitised genetic information we get from nature, such as rainforests, coral reefs and peatlands. This information is used to produce drugs, food products and vaccines, but it’s hard to track it back to its original countries of origin – and many in the developing world now expect payment for the use of their resources. The COP15 deal outlines an agreement to create a funding mechanism for DSI – an addition to the agreement that has been particularly celebrated by Africa, which called for its creation prior to the conference.