Presentation
Biodiversity COP17 in Armenia will be the first COP since the establishment of a permanent body dedicated to better represent Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs). It will therefore have to consider implementation-related issues under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). But as shown by this Issue Brief, these issues also reflect broader and longer-standing debates beyond the COP17 agenda: how biodiversity governance recognizes different actors and forms of agency; how financing reaches and supports IPLCs; how different knowledge systems are recognized, legitimized, and mobilized and what more pluralistic and inclusive approaches to governance could contribute to transformative change and toward halting and reversing biodiversity loss.
Key Messages
- The operationalization of the permanent body dedicated to better represent IPLCs is key to securing genuine influence and participation of IPLCs in biodiversity decision-making. As the first its kind, its functioning will also send an important signal regarding the place of IPLCs in global governance.
- Questions of participation are ultimately questions of governance and justice. Debates on representation, terminology, indigenous territories, financing, knowledge systems, are not procedural issues only, but do reflect discussions around legitimacy, authority, and the distribution of power within biodiversity governance.
- Recognition without resources will remain symbolic. Despite growing recognition in many multilateral processes, within CBD and beyond, and at many other governance levels, many IPLCs groups continue to face significant barriers in accessing finance, limiting their ability to participate fully in decision-making and in implementation processes.
- Indigenous, local or traditional knowledge cannot be simply integrated into existing systems as additional providers of data. It represents a more equitable and non-extractive relationship with the natural world and cannot be understood outside of broader cultural systems or ways of life. Biodiversity governance could learn from this to move beyond knowledge inclusion towards pluralism and reciprocity, with the recognition that different ways of understanding, monitoring and governing biodiversity are valid and respected.
- Moving from participation to real partnership and co-governance may be one of the most important conditions for transformative change. The challenge now is no longer to only consult IPLCs, but to create arrangements that enable co-definition, co-design and co-creation of biodiversity pathways at local, national and international levels.
