Rights of Indigenous Peoples & Environment | HRC57 Side Event

This side event to the 57th session of the Human Rights Council is organized by Earthjustice, the Geneva Human Rights, Biodiversity and Land Task Force (GeHRBiL) and the International Service for Human Rights, with the support of the Geneva Environment Network.

If we just consider the question of biodiversity, Indigenous peoples help to preserve 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, even though they represent only 5 to 6% of the world’s population and occupy less than a quarter of the Earth’s surface.

The latest IPBES (the International Panel on Biodiversity, the climate equivalent of the IPCC) report states that deforestation is generally lower on Indigenous territories, especially when the rights of these peoples are preserved (rights to land, the possibility of maintaining knowledge, languages, alternative means of subsistence, etc.).

But this engagement comes at a dramatic cost for Indigenous peoples’ communities: between 2012 and 2022, nearly 2,000 people were murdered worldwide because they were defending their land, and more than a third of them were Indigenous peoples, according to the NGO Global Witness.

The role of Indigenous peoples in ecological terms is all too often neglected. The latest report from the IPBES recognises ‘the importance […] of ensuring the full and effective participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities in governance’.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) itself recognizes the dependency of Indigenous peoples and local communities on biological diversity and their unique role in conserving life on Earth. This recognition is enshrined in the preamble of the Convention and its provisions, in particular under Article 8(j), where “Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate, respect, preserve and maintain the knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval of knowledge holders and to encourage equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of such knowledge.”

Although some of the other international environmental instruments may also have references to Indigenous peoples (such as the Paris Agreement), they do not provide them the same explicit recognition.

Therefore, human rights instruments protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples, such as the 2007 UN Declaration and ILO Conventions 107 and 169, must also be seen as contributing to the protection of the environment and following the recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment by the Human Rights Council (48/13) and the UN General Assembly (76/300), this Council must take greater account of this link.

The aim of this side event is to bear witness to what is at stake for Indigenous peoples and to outline the perspectives that should be developed within the Council to this end.

Видео Rights of Indigenous Peoples & Environment | HRC57 Side Event канала Geneva Environment Network