Natural Justice to Advocate Indigenous Rights at COP16. Image: Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.
(The Post News)-
A non-profit organization, Natural Justice, will partake in the 16th Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16), which is held in Cali, Colombia, from the 21st of October to the 1st of November. The “Peace with Nature” meeting this year is the first after the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) was adopted in 2022.
The theme focusing on peace, justice, and human rights, Natural Justice, sets out to advocate for Indigenous communities and land defenders across Africa who are continuously facing land dispossession, pollution, and environmental degradation. COP16 sets out to play a crucial role in advancing biodiversity protections and to address global crises like climate change, loss of biodiversity, and environmental injustice.
Natural Justice recognized that biodiversity is the foundation of all life and is a major factor in climate mitigation and adoption. Natural Justice will centralize its work to ensure the indigenous peoples and local communities are recognized as key actors in safeguarding biodiversity. Promoting equity, justice, and human rights in the Global Biodiversity Framework’s implementation is key to their advocacy.
Natural Justice’s head of campaigns, Katherine Robinson, has emphasized that COP16 presents an opportunity to hold governments accountable for legally binding commitments as the multiple planetary crises pose not only an existential threat to humanity but to fundamental human rights. Target 3 and Target 22 of the KMGBF will receive particular attention, which focuses on the protection of the rights of communities, more specifically environmental defenders. Programme manager at Natural Justice, Jacqueline Rukanda, has pointed out how important the targets are, as Target 22 acknowledges the role of communities in climate change and biodiversity protection, which gives them political agency in decision-making, all of which the UNFCCC COP has not done thus far.
Another program manager at Natural Justice, Jazzy Rasolojaona, has emphasized the need for more inclusion of Indigenous peoples and local communities during these processes. A concern that stems from the focus on the protected areas under Target 3 has pushed Natural Justice to also advocate against the potential for human rights abuses that are linked to the militarization of conservation areas. Coordinator of the African Environmental Defenders Initiative, Tawonga Chihana, has warned of these dangers as they could potentially translate into militarized forms of conservation and intensify human rights abuses globally.
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