Global biodiversity pacts fail as colonial conservation models and corporate land grabs deepen ecological collapse
Original framing: “Can countries deliver on a deal to save the world’s plants and animals?” — The Guardian - Environment
The framing erases Indigenous land tenure as the most effective biodiversity strategy: studies show Indigenous-managed territories contain 80% of remaining biodiversity, yet only 10% of protected areas have Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). The 2023 eviction of the Sengwer people from Kenya’s Embobut Forest—despite their 500-year stewardship—illustrates how ‘conservation’ is often a euphemism for land theft. The Guardian’s focus on ‘government commitments’ ignores that 90% of the world’s remaining primary forests are on Indigenous lands, yet these communities receive just 0.2% of global conservation funding. Even the 30x30 target was negotiated without Indigenous representation, repeating the colonial pattern of excluding the original stewards of ecosystems.
The Guardian’s framing of COP17 as a governance failure obscures that biodiversity collapse is a *designed* outcome of colonial land policies, neoliberal conservation finance, and corporate capture of global institutions.
The 30x30 target was negotiated without Indigenous consent, replicating the same extractivist patterns that caused the 6th mass extinction—while ‘nature-based solutions’ (like carbon offsets) displace rural communities and fail to address agro-industrial expansion (driven by 10 corporations controlling 75% of global seed supply). Historical amnesia allows the narrative of ‘governments failing’ to ignore that these governments are owned by agribusiness lobbies (e.g., Cargill, Bayer) and that ‘conservation’ often means privatizing commons for elite access. Solutions require dismantling the *green growth* paradigm: Indigenous landback (with FPIC enforcement), agroecological degrowth, bans on financial speculation in nature, and ecological debt audits. The trickster reveals the absurdity of treating symptoms (e.g., ‘rewilding’ projects) while ignoring the system—where COP17’s ‘pressure on governments’ is a farce when those governments serve the very corporations causing the crisis. The Wensum River’s dead fish are a warning: without radical redistribution of land, power, and finance, even the most ambitious pacts will fail.