NEXT week’s Cop15 global biodiversity summit must drop plans to declare 30 per cent of the planet “protected areas” by 2030 or risk “devastating the lives of indigenous peoples,” rights groups and charities have warned.

Without serious overhaul, current plans “will be hugely destructive for the livelihoods of other subsistence land users, while diverting attention away from the real drivers of biodiversity and climate collapse,” a statement from Survival International, Amnesty International, Minority Rights Group International and Rainforest Foundation UK says.

In April, 250 indigenous peoples’ organisations, NGOs and academics expressed concern over a proposal to double the size of protected areas under the UN’s Post-2020 Global Diversity Framework, noting that “protected areas, which are the cornerstone of mainstream, Western-led conservation efforts, have led to widespread evictions, hunger, ill health and human rights violations, including killing, rapes and torture, across Africa and Asia,” the new statement points out.

“Conservation” and protection of wildlife has been deployed as an excuse to force indigenous peoples off their land which is afterwards sold to developers for logging and mining — making a mockery of the whole process. 

In July, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) slammed such tactics by the Narendra Modi administration, saying India’s Forest Conservation Act should be renamed “the forest corporatisation act” after rules protecting the rights of indigenous adivasis were scrapped — millions have been forced from their lands in recent years — and regulations on the sale of forest land for commercial exploitation were weakened. 

Peoples like the Jenu Keruba of Nagarhole national park were evicted when their land was declared a tiger sanctuary, though they had lived alongside the animals for centuries — and though deforestation and illegal poaching are seen to increase once the native populations are removed.

“There is little evidence that existing Protected Areas have successfully protected ecosystems and should therefore be expanded, and the target is being set without an assessment of their social impacts. 

“The evidence is also clear that stopping ecological collapse will take much more than an enlarged global Protected Area network, with a much stronger focus needed on addressing the drivers of biodiversity loss, such as overconsumption,” the rights groups warn.

The Cop15 biodiversity summit opens next Wednesday in Montreal, Canada.