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indigenous rights
Want to Protect Coral Reefs? Recognize the Rights of Nature
The escalating coral bleaching crisis must serve as a call to action, not just for environmental protection, but for a transformative shift in how we view and relate to Nature.
Nov 12, 2024
Amid the most widespread coral reef bleaching ever recorded, we face a crucial question: How can we implement effective, holistic protections for coral reefs?
For over 30 years, governments and civil society have gathered at United Nations Climate Change Conferences, yet the results have often been superficial and ineffective. Despite scientists’ urgent warnings about the devastating effects of warming beyond 1.5°C, proposed mitigation targets remain unmet, and accountability is absent due to non-binding agreements. Climate policies have largely centered on humanity’s needs in the name of development and economic growth, neglecting the equally vital futures of other species. This oversight has led to repeated failures for Nature, contributing to today’s largest recorded coral bleaching event across 74 countries. Now, scientists warn that even 1.5°C may be too much for coral and ocean health.
News headlines keep warning us of a point of no return, calling attention to fires in the Amazon and yet another massive coral bleaching event. This may seem distant from our daily lives, but the truth is that the problem is closer than we realize—and solutions lie within each of us. Recognizing the inherent Rights of Nature is one such solution.
What Are the Rights of Nature?
Recognizing and respecting Nature’s rights holds the potential to change humanity's relationship with our planet. The Rights of Nature movement traces its roots to Christopher Stone’s 1972 book Should Trees Have Standing? Since then, countless scholars, scientists, and activists have joined the call to recognize Nature’s inherent rights and our responsibility to all other beings with whom we are interconnected.
The Rights of Nature is now a powerful global movement aiming to transform human consciousness, redesign unsustainable economic and social systems, and provide a framework for living in harmony with Nature. Drawing on the wisdom of ancient and Indigenous cultures and leveraging modern law, the movement seeks a balanced relationship between humankind and all forms of life, honoring the natural equilibrium of our biosphere.
Recognizing the rights of corals ensures a holistic approach to ocean protection, safeguarding these crucial ecosystems so they can continue to exist, persist, and regenerate their life-sustaining cycles.
Recognizing the inherent Rights of Nature to protect the future of coral reefs provides a real and holistic solution not only to corals but to the well-being of all species that live among them. The escalating coral bleaching crisis must serve as a call to action, not just for environmental protection, but for a transformative shift in how we view and relate to Nature. By recognizing coral reefs as living entities with inherent rights through the Rights of Nature framework, we move beyond traditional conservation approaches. This holistic lens not only restores and protects coral ecosystems but also elevates the voices and rights of Indigenous communities, whose knowledge and stewardship are vital to these ecosystems’ survival. Granting legal rights to reefs ensures their protection from exploitation and destruction while fostering a deeper respect for the interconnectedness of all life. It’s a crucial step toward securing the future of coral reefs and the communities that depend on them.
Have Coral Reefs Been Granted Rights Around the World?
The Rights of Nature movement allows for a flexible approach, enabling creative implementation tailored to different environments and legal systems. In Ecuador, these rights were embedded in the Constitution in 2008, while Panama established them as National Law (Law 287) in 2022. Various initiatives and campaigns for Ocean Rights, encompassing diverse marine ecosystems, are underway—a majority of them featured in the EcoJurisprudence Monitor.
Just this past September, the Rights of Nature movement had a big win led by the Leatherback Project and local entities when Panama adopted the Saboga Wildlife Refuge under Resolution N° DM-0361-2024, protecting critical sea turtle habitat and recognizing corals’ rights to regenerate their vital cycles. The resolution proposes to “promote the protection of the Rights of Nature, enshrined in Law 287 of 2022, ensuring that the ecosystems within the Saboga Wildlife Refuge are treated as subjects of rights, with the aim of preserving their integrity, regeneration, and ecological balance.” Additionally, the law recognizes the rights of corals to regenerate under this specific clause: “Promote the protection, conservation, and restoration of coral reefs and seagrass meadows, recognizing their importance as critical habitats for marine biodiversity and as fundamental components for the ecological health of the protected area and its resilience to climate change.” The protection of the Saboga Wildlife Refuge will require Panama’s action even beyond the borders of the reserve, as upholding coral and sea turtles' rights will not depend only on what happens inside protected areas.
Who Can Benefit From Corals Having Their Rights Recognized?
Listing coral reefs’ contributions to a healthy ocean could go on endlessly. Thriving coral reefs support thriving ocean life, provide essential nurseries for marine species, and offer reliable food sources. Recognizing the rights of corals ensures a holistic approach to ocean protection, safeguarding these crucial ecosystems so they can continue to exist, persist, and regenerate their life-sustaining cycles. As scientists warn, rising ocean temperatures are damaging coral reefs, making urgent action essential. Oceans know no borders, and governments must implement bold climate mitigation measures to halt and reverse ecosystem degradation. Recognizing Nature’s rights offers an effective and bold solution to achieving this goal. In summary, all benefit from coral reefs having their rights recognized.
How the Rights of Nature Are Being Used Around the World
From Antarctica to the Amazon rainforest to rivers in Bangladesh, the Rights of Nature movement is working to holistically protect vital ecosystems through principles rooted in ancient wisdom and the undoubted connection between humans and Nature. We need to restore our connection to Mother Earth and act boldly for the implementation of real, effective solutions to the polycrises we are facing today. The Rights of Nature movement offers hope for future generations, both human and non-human.
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Amazon Guardian Paulo Guajajara Was My Friend; 5 Years After His Killing, I Want Justice
Guajajara was the sixth Guardian killed by loggers in the Arariboia forest. News of his death went round the world. Despite that, none of the killers have been caught or tried.
Nov 01, 2024
Paulo Paulino Guajajara looks down and off to one side, the Amazon forest lush and dense behind him.
His voice thickens; he clears his throat. “My mother, she’s unwell. She told me to stop doing this work,” he says, and presses the heel of his hand against his eye to stop a tear.
He looks into the camera, “I told her I’m not scared, that she should let me fight. Because I have a son. And he will need the forest.”
Lobo once said, “Even if they kill me, I won’t stop fighting.”
Paulo, an Indigenous Amazon Guardian, was shot dead five years ago today (November 1, 2019) in the forest he loved—the Arariboia Indigenous Territory, in the Amazon’s northeast.
I was on the other side of the camera when he spoke of his mother’s fears. He wanted the world to know his people, his land, were under threat. He knew illegal loggers were paying gunmen to kill Guardians like him, but he continued to track them, leaving his infant son, wife, and his mother at home.
The Guardians are Guajajara people who protect Indigenous land. They confront illegal loggers, force them to leave, then destroy their camps. They do it to protect their families and for the Awá people, their neighbours who share the territory and some of whom shun all outside contact. Paulo admired the Awá. They are completely self-sufficient in their forest, but cannot survive without it.
Paulo and I met in 2017 when we recorded his video. In 2019 I went on a Guardian patrol as a researcher with Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous and tribal peoples’ rights. It was on that journey, deep in the rainforest, that Paulo and I became friends—and he asked me to call him by his Guardian name, Lobo (‘Wolf’ in English). The group assigns a name that reflects a Guardian’s personality and his place. It binds them together, protects their anonymity.
The Guardians gathered in a clearing to prepare for our patrol. They brought several motorbikes and a quad bike. About 15 men chatted casually as they honed their machetes, checked motorbike chains, and calculated how much petrol to take. They wrapped and stowed a big piece of meat—food for the journey. One man drew a map in the earth with a stick and pointed to the illegal logging camp—the object of our patrol. Well-worn bulletproof vests were distributed, then we got on the bikes and headed into the forest.
Lobo was quiet and focused, pitching in with an easy smile. He insisted I travel with him and his cousin on the more comfortable quad bike. As we rode dirt trails into the thickening forest, he taught me words in Tenetehar, his Indigenous language. He pointed and said, “foot,” “hand,” “elbow.” I repeated, worked to get my mouth around the unfamiliar syllables. Later, I proudly spoke the words he’d taught me, and the Guardians guffawed. I was saying, “ blue foot,” “fat elbow,” “laughing hand.” Lobo just grinned.
We gathered around a fire that night, kept small to prevent detection. The meat was cooked, and Lobo offered it to me on a skewer. He drew his machete, elegantly ran it down the meat’s edge, and urged me to pull away a thin, sinewy slice. It was a welcome treat, dipped in crunchy cassava farinha.
Lobo admired a woolly hat I’d brought from London, so I gave it to him. He cut eye holes and wore it pulled down over his face to keep his identity secret and protect him from the hired assassins. The group spread out and settled on the cold forest floor, wrapped in darkness and sound—the buzz of cicadas and trills of crickets, descants over the rumbling bass line of amorous bullfrogs.
The next day we travelled on foot. The Guardians inspected every snapped twig—evidence loggers were nearby. They examined tire tracks, noting their age and direction of travel. Tension rose as we got closer. We passed a pile of stacked logs and arrived at the camp—an oval-shaped clearing where blue and black tarps sheltered cooking and seating areas.
But the loggers had fled. We ate their breakfast—eggs and a pot of pumpkin they’d left cooking on their fire. And when we discovered a barrel of fresh water, Lobo insisted that I be the first to bathe.
He was angry though, disgusted at the loggers’ intrusion, the theft of trees, the destruction of the forest. And he was frustrated they’d escaped. “I want to burn and destroy this camp,” Lobo said, holding his lighter to a tarpaulin’s edge. “We don’t want anything of theirs in our territory.”
Lobo was out hunting when he was ambushed—shot and killed. Beside him, his friend and fellow Guardian Tainaky Tenetehar was also hit. The impact bent Tainaky over in pain. Straining with every part of his body, he straightened up and ran as blood poured from his right shoulder. Lobo lay dead on the forest floor, still wearing the hat that could not protect him.
Lobo was the sixth Guardian killed by loggers in the Arariboia forest. News of his death went round the world. Despite that, none of the killers have been caught or tried. And on this fifth anniversary of his killing, everything Lobo sought to protect is in greater peril—particularly the uncontacted Awá. They are among more than 150 uncontacted Indigenous peoples around the world—the most self-sufficient and most vulnerable peoples on the planet. Survival International is fighting to stop miners, loggers, ranchers, other extractive industries, and criminals stealing their territory and resources. The loggers are still there, while the Brazilian government fails the Awá by not upholding its own and international laws that require their land be protected for their exclusive use.
When I think of Lobo, I remember his easy laugh, the grin that spread slowly across his face. He always carried a pen drive loaded with his tunes. That smile grew ever wider when his favourite came on: Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” He would close his eyes and hum along.
Lobo once said, “Even if they kill me, I won’t stop fighting.”
His fight continues; for there is a little boy growing up without his marvellous father. And he still needs the forest.
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We Know What’s Behind Biodiversity Loss—It’s Time to Actually Tackle It
To halt global biodiversity loss in an equitable and gender-responsive manner, countries must stop subsidizing export-oriented economic sectors.
Oct 24, 2024
As global leaders converge in Colombia for the COP16 global biodiversity summit this week, they face a stark reality: Despite over a decade of pledges to protect biodiversity, not a single global target has been fully achieved.
Forests continue to burn, habitats are vanishing, and biodiversity is spiraling toward collapse. Without addressing the systemic drivers of environmental destruction—especially in the Global South—this failure will persist.
The last biodiversity summit (COP15) saw the adoption of decisions on instruments to reduce inequalities, ensure a gender-responsive approach to biodiversity action, take a human rights-based approach, and guarantee access to justice and participation in decision-making by communities. These points are found in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity’s Gender Plan of Action and the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Targets 22 and 23 and Section C on implementation.
The economic model that Global South countries are forced to pursue by the international financial institutions, based on natural resource extraction with highly unequal distribution of benefits and impacts, is driving extinction and global biodiversity loss.
In Cali, countries will take stock of the targets and commitments adopted so far. This meeting is a crucial opportunity to assess how well the 196 signatories of the convention—sadly, the United States is not one of them—have tackled biodiversity loss so far. And because the crisis we face is so urgent, it’s also a moment in which we must look toward the leadership of women, who play key roles in local agricultural production, family and local economies, and stewardship of biodiversity in key areas like the Amazon.
Picture women like Lucy Mulenkei, a Masai woman who has championed the interests of marginalized pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities throughout Africa. Or Patricia Gualinga, who has led her Kichwa community in the Amazon in keeping oil drilling off their land and proposing a “living forest” model for rights-based conservation. And Xananine Calvillo, a young woman from Mexico who recently called on the World Bank to stop loaning money to factory farming companies that destroy forests and rivers in sensitive ecosystems.
Our governments and institutions have failed in the past, but they have a chance to listen to women leaders this week. It’s urgent that they do this, and start putting their money where their mouth is, ending subsidies for harmful industries that are behind biodiversity loss.
Why Past Plans on Biodiversity Failed
The strategy agreed in 2010 to guide global action during the U.N. Decade on Biodiversity (2011-2020) recognized the need to address the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. The failure to tackle these root causes is one of the reasons cited in the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook as to why we didn’t meet the first global biodiversity target in 2010.
Building on this analysis, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 structured the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets around five Strategic Goals, setting benchmarks for progress through relevant policies and enabling conditions.
However, at the global level, none of the 20 Aichi Targets were fully achieved.
Target 4 on sustainable production and consumption was deemed not achieved with “high confidence,” which means that actions to reduce the ecological footprint failed after a decade of commitment. Between 2011 and 2016, the ecological footprint remained at approximately 1.7 times the level of biocapacity—in other words, requiring “1.7 Earths” to regenerate the biological resources used by our societies.
The rate of loss of all natural habitats including forests, which is considered in Aichi Target 5, is not lower than that of previous decades, with South America surpassing a record for forest fires this year, with 433,000 fire hotspots and over 14.4 million hectares of forest cover burned or affected in different biomes of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru. Brazil and Bolivia alone have seen their forest devastated by 7 million hectares each, while the Amazon river basin is reporting the lowest levels on record amid a severe drought driven by climate change.
What’s Behind Biodiversity Loss
Governments continue to provide billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and other perverse incentives to support deforestation, water pollution, and fossil fuel consumption which directly work against the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.
By some measures, countries spend at least $2.6 trillion a year on propping up polluting industries, which is equal to 2.5% of global GDP. And the wealthiest nations claim there isn’t enough money to help Global South countries respond to the crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
The failure to tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, including fossil fuel extraction, mining, industrial agriculture, intensive livestock farming, large-scale infrastructure projects, and monoculture tree plantations— estimated to drive up to 90% of biodiversity loss—are partly linked to the contradictions within the Global Biodiversity Framework. Biodiversity offsets and other market-based schemes considered in Target 19(d) undermine Goal C of the framework, which is to protect the integrity, connectivity, and resilience of all ecosystems.
Forest fires continue to rage in the Amazon, and there’s no time to let companies swoop in with false solutions to the problem.
Letting the market have its way with biodiversity policy is not the way to achieve biodiversity protection, either. So-called biodiversity investment projects have increasingly been exposed for human rights violations, social and gender impacts, conceptual flaws like inattention to ecosystem integrity, and problems with compliance and effectiveness.
The economic model that Global South countries are forced to pursue by the international financial institutions, based on natural resource extraction with highly unequal distribution of benefits and impacts, is driving extinction and global biodiversity loss. That’s why, if we really want to enable urgent and transformative action, government support for export-oriented economic sectors, subsidies, preferential tax subsidies, and diluting environmental regulations must end immediately.
Here’s What Should Happen at COP16
The biodiversity summit this week in Colombia presents us with an opportunity to reaffirm our collective commitment to forest and biodiversity conservation.
Women in all their diversity, Indigenous peoples and local communities, Afro-descendants, peasants, youth, and grassroots movements must be central in shaping the policies that will guide our future. Governments must prioritize people and the planet over corporate profit in a way that is just and equitable, gender-responsive, rights-based, and rooted in a non-market-based approach led by real, community-led solutions.
Transformative change necessarily demands challenging the international financial and monetary systems that force Global South governments to maintain and expand extractive activities and perpetuate the destruction of nature, as well as gender and social inequalities.
As global leaders gather in Cali to review the state of implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework and show the alignment of their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans with the Framework, it is crucial that we critically examine the level of biodiversity commitments and address the structural drivers of biodiversity loss.
If we ignore those structural drivers, the harmful activities that are the same ones countries have been propping up with subsidies and favorable terms, there’s no way to halt the biodiversity crisis. Forest fires continue to rage in the Amazon, and there’s no time to let companies swoop in with false solutions to the problem. Transformative change is what is needed, and women like Xananine, Lucy, and Patricia will be there at COP16 with real solutions in their hands.
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