New Global Roadmap on Advancing Rights and Equity in Conservation launched

In early February 2024, a group of diverse knowledge holders gathered for an international workshop in Nanyuki, Kenya. The aim was to provide space for inclusive discussion and to establish a roadmap to provide support for the delivery of more equitable governance and respect for rights in area-based conservation. The result was the publishing of a brand new global Roadmap for Advancing Rights and Equity detailing 11 priority areas with 32 action items. These areas, the participants agreed, are considered to be those most critical in advancing these topics towards 2030. 

The 'Rights and equity' workshop was a direct response to the strong global commitments articulated in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in 2022, where human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities were centred in biodiversity policy in a ground-breaking way.  Target 3 which calls for the conservation of 30% of the world's lands, waters and seas by 2030, also insists that the expansion of these areas happens “respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local community, including over their traditional territories” and recognises that these territories can be, themselves, part of the answer for how to expand conservation.

The intended audience of the Roadmap is any actor interested in advancing the achievement of Target 3 in diverse ways, such as Indigenous peoples and local community organisations, governments and other supportive actors such as donors, NGOs and large global organisations, such as IUCN. 

The workshop was hosted by IMPACT Kenya, a Maasai organisation, who co-convened with a range of partners including IUCN (IUCN WCPA, IUCN CEESP, the Protected and Conserved Areas Team and Eastern and Southern Regional Office (ESARO)), the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), the ICCA Consortium and the International Institute for Education and Development. The event was attended by 47 participants across 24 countries from Indigenous peoples networks and organisations, community conservation initiatives as well as global actors from the CBD, UNEP and other donors and human rights advocacy groups. The workshop was funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The Roadmap for Advancing Rights and Equity details 11 priority areas on areas as diverse as changing discourses around conservation to changing the way we finance and reforming national laws to recognise diverse conservation actors and their rights including over their territories. 

The Protected and Conserved Areas Team, under its new flagship initiative for addressing Target 3, Act 30,  will build in several of the actions. This includes supporting the recognition of tenure (Action Area 5), work on national level dialogues for law and policy reform (Action Area 7),  changing narratives around conservation (Action Area 1), and increasing the assessment of rights, equity and governance of protected and conserved areas (Action Area 5), with consent under the IUCN Green List  programme of work. The roadmap will inform a new programme on work on grievance mechanisms (Action Area 11) to address rights issues in protected areas. 

For further information on the PCA Team's work to advance the roadmap, please contact: jennifer.kelleher@iucn.org and for further information on the Act 30 programme, please contact: swati.hingorani@iucn.org