advancing Biodiversity and climate justice
INFO
Date: Monday, October 28, 2024
Time: 13:20
Room: Cocuy - Marie Khan Women's Caucus meeting room Plaza One
Capacity: 90 people
Hosts: Earthrights | FF | ALLIED
Web: www.cbd.int/side-events/6599
ABOUT
The severity of the multiple environmental crises, including climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss is escalating, paralleled by a surge in violence against environmental human rights defenders, including Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, pesants, local communities , women, and youth. Indigenous Peoples worldwide are pivotal in this battle, safeguarding terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems as well as threatened and endangered species critical for the planet. They oversee over a third of the Earth's protected land across 90 countries, preserving an estimated 80 percent of the world's remaining Biodiversity. As front-line defenders against ecological degradation, their activism contributes significantly to environmental and climate justice, as well as biodiversity conservation, protection and restoration. It also establishes best practices for environmental conservation embodied through their cultural practices, traditional knowledge, and ways of life.
However, around the world, environmental human rights defenders working to address the Biodiversity and climate crisis are increasingly targeted with violence, including the additional risk of gender-based violence for women environmental human rights defenders, harassment, intimidation, displacement, stigmatization and criminalization. According to Global Witness, on average, a land and environmental defender has been killed every two days since 2012.
Multilateral environmental agreements have already recognized the role of environmental human rights defenders in access rights and Biodiversity. Just this year, parties to the Escazu Agreement adopted an action plan for human rights defenders in environmental matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Global Biodiversity Framework aims to catalyze urgent and transformative action to live in harmony with nature by incorporating a human rights-based approach, taking a "whole of society" approach, and acknowledging the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. The implementation of the Framework should follow a human rights-based approach, respecting, protecting, promoting, and fulfilling human rights. Environmental human rights defenders are vital agents of change at the frontline of protecting nature and its contributions to human well-being.
Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity recognized their role by including Target 22 in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Target 22 sets out to “Ensure the full, equitable, inclusive, effective and gender-responsive representation and participation in decision-making, and access to justice and information related to Biodiversity by Indigenous Peoples, and local communities, respecting their cultures and their rights over lands, territories, resources, and traditional knowledge, as well as by women and girls, children and youth, and persons with disabilities and ensure the full protection of environmental human rights defenders”. According to the guidance provided by the CBD secretariat, the full protection that Target 22 "refers to measures that parties can take to safeguard individuals or groups who work to protect the environment, advocate for environmental justice, and defend the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities." Implementing this target should be part of the revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) that parties will submit before CBD COP 16.
Objective 1: Amplify the voices of environmental human rights defenders working to address the biodiversity and climate crisis, provide a platform for them to tell their stories, and offer their recommendations on how parties can advance in implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, mainly target 22 through a human rights-based approach.
Objective 2: Align parties on the critical need to engage in dialogue with civil society and environmental human rights defenders, shared good experiences and local solutions being developed at the national or regional levels, and on the need to take concrete steps to implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, mainly target 22.