UN sets guidelines for conservation groups to safeguard human rights

The United Nations Environment Programme recently released a report detailing 10 existing human rights standards and how they should be applied to conservation organizations and funders (COFs). In an effort to address the dramatic loss of global biodiversity and the climate crisis, private conservation organizations, many from the Global North, have stepped in to establish conservation areas, many of which are located in the Global South. But without adequate safeguards for the often marginalized communities living in would-be protected areas, reports of human rights violations abound. For example, in the DRC, the World Wild Fund for Nature, WWF, which manages the Salonga National Park and appoints its director, learned of allegations of human rights abuses by eco-guards against communities near the park but continued to provide financial and material support. The Frankfurt Zoological Society, which supports conservation and sustainable development in Tanzania’s iconic Serengeti, provided conservation funding and equipment to the Tanzania National Parks Authority, which took part in nonviolent and violent evictions of Maasai people. “A human rights-based approach to conserving, protecting and restoring the extraordinary diversity of life on Earth is the only ethical, equitable and effective way forward,” said David R. Boyd, a contributor to the report and former United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The UNEP report notes that marginalized communities including women, Indigenous peoples and people of African descent are particularly vulnerable to abuse in the name of conservation of the land on which they live.…This article was originally published on Mongabay