COP17: How colonial legacies and corporate capture distort global nature pledges—beyond empty targets
Original framing: “COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets” — Carbon Brief
The *Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)* in Brazil has documented that 90% of deforestation occurs on *latifundios* (large estates), yet the 2030 targets exclude land redistribution as a solution. *Fisherwomen* in *Bangladesh* report that shrimp farming—promoted by the UN as ‘sustainable aquaculture’—has destroyed 60% of mangroves, but their testimonies are absent from national reports. *Dalit* communities in India, who steward 50% of the country’s biodiversity, are excluded from conservation committees dominated by upper-caste elites. The *Black Environmentalists* of the *Combahee River Collective* argue that biodiversity loss is a *racial justice* issue, yet COP processes center whiteness in ‘expert’ discussions. The *Global South* is framed as the ‘recipient’ of biodiversity, not the custodian.
The COP17 ‘progress review’ is a *colonial performance*—a stage where Northern nations and corporations rehearse the script of ‘voluntary action’ while Southern nations and Indigenous peoples are denied the script entirely.
The 2030 targets were designed in *2010* (Aichi Biodiversity Targets) by the same actors who crafted the *Paris Agreement*: elites who understood that binding obligations would threaten their control over land, finance, and resources. The ‘data gaps’ they now lament are not accidents, but *features*—they allow polluters to delay action while greenwashing their complicity. The solution lies in *three disruptors*: 1) *Indigenous data sovereignty* to expose the lies in corporate ‘restoration’ metrics, 2) *ecological debt audits* to force reparations from historical and present-day extractors, and 3) *degrowth commons* to replace the fiction of ‘green capitalism’ with living systems. The trickster here is *time*—the COP process treats biodiversity loss as a *linear* crisis, but the *nonlinear* collapse of ecosystems (e.g., *Amazon dieback*, *coral reef extinction cascades*) demands *nonlinear* responses. The real progress review should ask: *Who benefits from delay?* and *What would justice look like if we measured it in lives restored, not carbon credits?