"ALL OUR RELATIONS" COP15 BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE
Photography by Pascal Debrunner
“ALL OUR RELATIONS” COP 15 BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE
20 December 2022 | Native Children’s Survival
“Identifying the present threat to Mother Earth, all her children, and its challenges is a positive step on the road to healing. However, suppose member-states of the United Nations continue to ignore nature’s warnings and that of our ancestors, the wisdom, guidance, and stewardship of Indigenous Peoples, and the will of their citizens. In that case, they will miss the opportunity and their obligation, and a great purification will come.”
The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15), 7-19 December 2022, ended in Montreal, Canada, this Monday. This was the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The main goal of COP15 was to see the adoption of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. That goal was achieved but to what end.
Biodiversity is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world, according to science. The term biodiversity comes from "biological diversity" and refers to Mother Earth and all our relations. From genes to ecosystems, biodiversity encompasses evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that sustain the sacred circle of life.
Experts in the international community have identified 36 official Biodiversity Hotspots worldwide. Biodiversity Hotspots are biogeographic regions with the richest and most threatened ecosystems of plant and animal life. While presently composed of approximately 2.5 percent of land, Biodiversity Hotspots are home to nearly 43 percent of known endemic mammals, reptiles, and bird species and more than half of the world's endemic plant species.
Within the Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island (North America), under the Endangered Species Act, the Whitebark Pine has been added to the list as threatened. The Whitebark Pine is a high-elevation tree of the Northern Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest, which populates 80 million acres and is crucial to the Northern Rocky Mountain Ecosystem. On the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, "there are more than 147,500 species...with more than 41,000 species threatened with extinction, including 41% of amphibians, 38% of sharks and rays, 34% of conifers, 33% of reef-building corals, 27% of mammals and 13% of birds."
Endangered ecosystems worldwide include the Caribbean Coral Reefs, Alaskan Kelp Forest, Mountain' fynbos' on Cape Town, Coorong Lagoon and Murray River Estuary, South Karst Springs, Sydney Coastal Wetlands, and Yellowstone National Park. Endangered species include Amur Leopards, Sunda Tigers, Rhinos, Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan, Sea Turtles, Hector's Dolphin, the Monarch Butterfly, Elephants, the Corrugated Frog, the North Atlantic Right Whale, and Eastern and Western Gorillas, which both have two subspecies... with three out of the four on the (IUCN 2022) Red List of Threatened Species. Turtle Island Bison (Native Buffalo) were most recently assessed for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Bison are listed as Near Threatened under criteria C2a(i). Birds of prey, i.e., the Cuban Kite, are also on the list.
According to reports, officials from the United Nations cultural agency and IUCN are warning that the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, is in peril without "ambitious, rapid and sustained" climate action. But at COP15, common sense appears to be endangered and threatened. Fifteen years of High-Level carbon footprint conferences in the name of biodiversity and 27 years in the name of Climate Change have produced false solutions to a made-made Biodiversity and Climate Crisis, and for what? A bottom-line profit. One could say today's Life-threatening Crisis is the legacy of blind consumption and big businesses' financial power and influence over the better nature of world leaders.
Early Monday morning, 19 December 2022, just before the break of dawn, leaders of COP15 celebrated the adoption of the "Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework." A vital part of the "Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework" is a new global framework for managing nature through 2030 by finding a path to protect 30 by 30, aka 30x30 percent of land and ocean. The framework also includes 30 billion dollars to aid the 30x30 goal by 2030.
During a press conference on 20 December 2022, COP15 leaders announced that they reached a historic agreement they said would halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity laws and put biodiversity on the path to recovery. Huang Runqiu, President of COP15 and Minister of Ecology and Environment of China, said it is an "Exciting moment for global biodiversity governance."
COP15 leaders at the conference acknowledged that it took quite a lot of compromise to move the process forward to achieve the 2020 vision to live in harmony with nature. "It was a wonderful success in Montreal," they said. But what kind of success, progress, and achievements, and at what price, are they speaking of?
History has taught that such agreements may mean something other than member-states of the United Nations implementing them. For example, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP),' a human rights instrument adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2007 that would protect land and life, has yet to achieve global implementation. UNDRIP was also historic, took more than 80 years to accomplish, and refers to the fundamental human rights of Indigenous Peoples. With an estimated 3 billion people worldwide impacted by land degradation and 1 million species facing extinction, we, the Indigenous Peoples, understand that to protect the natural world is to adhere to natural law and nature's warnings.
Though there were considerable concerns about the rapid adoption by member-states and concerns from Indigenous Peoples about the lack of inclusion in decision-making, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference adopted the "Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework." While the "Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework" document is legally not binding, the idea, according to COP15 leaders, is that the framework trickles into domestic laws. But we know domestic laws are, more often than not, changed, amended, or disregarded to meet the needs of special interests.
The COP scenario, both Biodiversity and Climate Change Conferences, are like a doomsday Hollywood blockbuster portraying a false sense of power while more immense financial interests rule the day. The problem with the narrative is that real heroes, stewards, and protectors of land and life continue to be patronized, killed off, and written out altogether — and the reality and consequences of that will be catastrophic.