{"id":3503307,"date":"2024-09-11T08:28:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T08:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3503307"},"modified":"2025-01-22T00:55:48","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T00:55:48","slug":"land-back-at-the-center-of-debates-over-how-to-preserve-the-biosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-09-11\/land-back-at-the-center-of-debates-over-how-to-preserve-the-biosphere\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Land Back\u2019 at the Center of Debates Over How to Preserve the Biosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: This article<\/a> was originally published at Deceleration, a nonprofit online journal producing original news and analysis responding to our shared ecological, political, and cultural crises.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe elders tell us we\u2019ve got three years before it gets really intense. And it\u2019s going to happen unless we change our consciousness now. We need everybody in this time. We are all gurus. You\u2019re a guru, believe it or not. There are no more singular gurus. The answers are in your hearts.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 Illarion Mercullieff, (Unangax\u0302 , Aleut)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

RAPID CITY, S.D.\u2014Wild nature on planet Earth is in a state of free fall. It is a \u201cbiodiversity crisis,\u201d in the language of wilderness conservationists and policymakers. In what is being described as a sixth mass extinction, unique species who\u00a0evolved over millions of years are today being swept out of existence at a rate unseen since the collapse of the dinosaurs. The losses are \u201cdizzying,\u201d with 70 percent of the world\u2019s wildlife populations eliminated just since 1970, said Stephen Woodley, an ecologist and vice chair for science and biodiversity at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.<\/p>\n

Humankind is both a victim of this crisis as well as \u201cthe asteroid<\/a>\u201d causing the collapse. Some, of course, are more \u201casteroid\u201d than others.<\/p>\n

Gathering in the last week of August in the Black Hills of South Dakota, or H\u00e9 Sapa in Lakota, speakers and organizers of the 12th convening of the World Wilderness Congress say the extinction crisis is intrinsically tied to both the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the rising heat generated by the burning of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

To arrest the climate crisis, in other words, requires deepening and expanding protections for wilderness. And that has increased attention on those wild lands and waters that lie beyond urban and agricultural areas, \u201cwilderness\u201d zones that today represent only 26 percent of the Earth. Only about a quarter of that quarter\u2014around 6%\u2014have some form of official protections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Increasingly, global conversations on conservation are recognizing that restoring wilderness also requires restoring land and agency to Indigenous communities, tribes, and nations. Yet not so long ago, wilderness conservation as a Western paradigm was rooted in the genocide and eviction of original peoples from their traditional homelands by colonial powers. Today\u2019s conservation efforts increasingly involve\u2014or are even led by\u2014Indigenous peoples. It\u2019s been a slow paradigm shift that is center stage at WILD12.<\/p>\n

Woodley was addressing the audience as part of a panel dedicated to the intersection of indigenous land tenure and The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Adopted in 2022,\u00a0Target Three<\/a>\u00a0of that vision calls specifically for preserving 30 percent of the planet\u2019s lands and waters as wilderness by 2030*. It further calls for \u201crecognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Chief Tashka Yawanaw\u00e1 and Laura Yawanaw\u00e1 speaking at WILD12. Image: Greg Harman<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet even such language was developed without significant Indigenous input, stated panelist Andrea Carmen, the Yaqui executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council. And while Indigenous land rights are recognized in a fraction of existing wilderness spaces, biodiversity targets like Target Three put the bulk of those remaining lands, and the people occupying them, in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust do the math. How much of that targeted land is going to be targeting the lands and territories and waters that have been traditionally owned, used, occupied, and acquired by Indigenous peoples themselves?\u201d Carmen asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Without clear delineation of land rights, shifting conservation priorities risk doing further harm to Native communities.<\/p>\n

Illustrating the difference between Western conservation framings and many Indigenous cosmologies, Carmen added:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur word for the spirit world [translates as] the\u00a0flower wilderness<\/em>. Not the flower garden.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Framework\u2019s 30 percent by 2030 goals are also a far cry from the 50 percent of lands and waters called for protecting at the conclusion of WILD9, held in M\u00e9rida, Yucatan, M\u00e9xico, in 2009. That declaration evolved into an international campaign known as\u00a0Nature Needs Half<\/a>, later popularized by famed biologist E.O. Wilson in his book \u201cHalf Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The increased attention to placing Indigenous thought and leadership at the center of wilderness preservation efforts has resulted in some improvements.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone talking about us now, we are not excluded in the target, we are included,\u201d said Ramson Karmushu, a Maasai organizer dedicated to documenting and preserving Indigenous knowledge. \u201cEveryone who is coming to do conservation is thinking about indigenous peoples and is including us in all of these discussions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n