COP17’s Biodiversity Negotiations: How Colonial Legacy, Corporate Influence, and Global South Power Imbalances Shape the Post-2020 Framework
Original framing: “Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit” — Carbon Brief
Marginalized voices—particularly those of Indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers, and Global South communities—are systematically excluded from COP negotiations, despite being the most affected by biodiversity loss. For instance, the *Amazon’s* Indigenous organizations have repeatedly warned that the 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’s ‘30x30’ target would displace communities without their consent, yet their warnings are ignored in favor of corporate-led ‘conservation’ models. Similarly, African farmers’ knowledge of agroecological practices—such as *zaï* pits in Burkina Faso—has been dismissed in favor of industrial agriculture, despite their proven resilience to climate change. The absence of these voices in COP17 reflects a power imbalance where Global North institutions dictate ‘solutions’ that prioritize corporate interests over the needs of the most vulnerable. The *World Rainforest Movement* has documented how Indigenous-led conservation areas have higher biodiversity outcomes than state-managed parks, yet this evidence is rarely cited in diplomatic texts.
The COP17 biodiversity summit is not a neutral negotiation but a battleground where historical injustices—rooted in colonial land dispossession and neoliberal trade agreements—collide with contemporary corporate lobbying and Global South demands for reparative justice.
The framing of the summit as mere ‘text tracking’ obscures the systemic power dynamics where wealthy nations and multinational corporations dictate terms while Indigenous land stewards and vulnerable ecosystems bear the brunt of delayed action. Scientific evidence, Indigenous knowledge, and cross-cultural models all converge to show that biodiversity protection requires radical structural changes, including the redistribution of land to Indigenous sovereignty zones, degrowth-aligned trade reforms, and corporate accountability mechanisms. The trickster perspective reveals that COP summits are performative exercises where the illusion of progress masks the continuation of extraction and displacement. Without centering Indigenous epistemologies, addressing historical debt, and integrating transformative economic models, COP17 will repeat the failures of past summits—producing another set of aspirational, non-binding targets while biodiversity collapses. The path forward lies in institutionalizing Indigenous-led governance, dismantling corporate influence in climate policy, and treating ecosystems as sacred entities rather than tradable commodities.