This high-level event, co-convened by Swedbio, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Women 4 Biodiversity, the Geneva Environment Network (GEN), and Forest Peoples Programme, was held on the 8th Dec 2021.
The event aimed at drawing attention to the importance of human rights in the Global Biodiversity Framework prior to the final face-to-face negotiations of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.
Advocating for human rights in environmental policy making
Respecting and protecting human rights and protecting the environment are inextricably linked, as recently confirmed by the Human Rights Council resolution 48/13 on the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Yet while Heads of State from 93 countries have called to end siloed thinking in the Leaders Pledge for Nature, and global civil society has stated the same in no uncertain terms – environmental policy making still too often excludes or side-lines human rights.
On the 8th of December, a collaborative panel was held to discuss the important opportunity we have right now to changing this history of division between human rights and environmental policy making, in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Framework. The panellists discussed opportunities that they could see to bring human rights into the new framework not only as a guide to do no harm, but also and importantly as a beacon for ways to do things better.
The panel took place just after two important things had moved: first the Co-Chairs of the Open-Ended Working Group had released a Reflections Document which outlined the directions they see the negotiations moving in; and secondly the face-to-face negotiations planned for January were postponed, likely to March. This sharpened the discussions, as all panellists shared a new focus on moving the text onwards and finding places where human rights could be improved.
The full proceedings are available here and we look forward to continued and greater collaboration between like-minded organisations and people to grasp the opportunities ahead to foreground human rights and find a just transition to a world fit for the challenges we face.