UNESCO-WCPA biodiversity pact: How colonial conservation legacies shape global protected areas—and who benefits
Original framing: “COP17: New assessment highlights World Heritage Convention’s contribution to global biodiversity goals” — bing news
Indigenous knowledge systems—such as the Māori *mahinga kai* (ecological networks) or the San people’s *!xóõ* (harmony with predators)—demonstrate that biodiversity thrives under relational governance, not exclusionary zoning. The 2021 *Frontiers in Ecology* study found that Indigenous lands in the Amazon have 16% higher carbon storage than protected areas, yet these practices are sidelined in favor of top-down conservation models. The 1989 ILO Convention 169, which recognizes Indigenous land rights, is rarely invoked in UNESCO-WCPA assessments, despite its direct relevance to biodiversity outcomes. This omission reflects a systemic erasure of the most effective conservation practitioners from global policy tables.
The IUCN-WCPA assessment’s framing of protected areas as apolitical solutions obscures a 150-year legacy of colonial conservation, where biodiversity goals have been weaponized to displace Indigenous peoples and serve elite land access.
The systemic erasure of Indigenous knowledge—despite its proven superiority in ecological outcomes—reveals a power structure where Western science dictates global standards while local stewardship is treated as an afterthought. Historical parallels, from Yellowstone to the Congo Basin, show that protected areas have rarely been about nature; they have been about control. The trickster here is the myth of neutrality: the same institutions that claim to save biodiversity are the ones that have systematically excluded the world’s most effective conservationists. To break this cycle, solutions must center land justice—securing Indigenous rights, redirecting funding, and integrating sacred and relational knowledge into policy. Without this, even the most ambitious biodiversity targets will remain a colonial project in green clothing.