Transforming Conservation: exploring the relationship between conservation and indigenous peoples and local communities.

Forest Peoples Programme and partners have encountered and documented human rights violations against indigenous peoples and local communities associated with conservation over the course of decades of work.  

There has been some progress in addressing this history (and present reality) in policy and on paper - for instance, in 2003, at the 5th World Parks Congress in Durban, the conservation world made commitments to return lands to indigenous peoples that had been turned into protected areas without their consent, and to only establish new protected areas with their full consent and involvement. But in far too many cases, those commitments have not been realised on the ground. 

We believe that the forms which conservation work takes require transformation to put an end to the repeated, serious and systematic violations of the human rights of indigenous peoples and of local communities. We need more sharing of good practices as well as a transfer of power into the hands of communities and peoples best placed to sustain conservation outcomes over generations.  

Transforming Conservation briefings 

In response to the need to seek alternatives and celebrate diversity in how conservation is understood and practiced, FPP launched the Transforming Conservation: from conflict to justice briefing series. This series offers case studies, testimony, research, and analysis that examine the current state of play of the relationship between conservation and indigenous peoples and local communities. It seeks to expose challenges and injustices linked to conservation operations, showcase practical, positive ways forward for the care of lands and ecosystems, led by indigenous peoples and local communities themselves, and reflect on pathways to just and equitable conservation more broadly. 

We reject any form of conservation which accepts human rights violations as a cost of achieving conservation outcomes and which sees indigenous peoples as a threat to biodiversity and the environment. Instead, we need to focus on creating the enabling conditions for indigenous peoples and for local communities to be able to sustain and be sustained by the ecological integrity of their lands, including through the recognition of fundamental rights in conservation practice and in national laws and policies. 

Decades of work has shown that the creation of government or privately managed protected areas has too often seen the dispossession of indigenous peoples and local communities of their ancestral and collective territories and resources; a phenomenon that continues today.  

The creation of these areas managed by external actors - a persistent practice that dates back to colonial times - has in many instances caused catastrophic cultural, physical and material harms to affected communities. In some cases, those charged with protecting these areas have been complicit in abuses, while the illegal wildlife trade has been used to justify increasingly militarized approaches which threaten indigenous peoples and local communities’ rights to access their resources. 

Tom Rowley, FPP

Using a stick to suggest placement of a sampling transect line measuring signs of wildlife and threats to the forest ecosystem along a gradient of Ogiek community management presence.

However, there are protected and conserved areas that demonstrate effective partnerships and collaborations between government agencies and indigenous peoples, or local communities. There are also an increasing number of cases where indigenous peoples themselves are declaring their own Indigenous Protected Areas. This increasing diversity in what is considered as conservation is positive. This briefing series therefore also looks at where indigenous peoples, or local communities, are already conserving their lands and territories and are seeking recognition as sustainable stewards of their lands and territories. 

This briefing series calls for more attention to and support for that approach, centering indigenous peoples and local communities as the best guardians of their own lands, territories and resources.