COP17 in Armenia: How Post-Soviet Extractivism and Global Biodiversity Goals Collide Amid Unresolved Land Conflicts
Original framing: “COP17 puts Armenia’s environmental record in the spotlight” — Al Jazeera
The voices most affected by Armenia’s environmental policies—such as the Yezidi communities displaced by the Amulsar gold mine or the women-led *Green Resistance* movement in Yerevan—are systematically excluded from COP17’s proceedings. A 2021 *Transparency International* report found that 68% of environmental activists in Armenia face legal harassment, particularly those documenting mining-related human rights abuses. The *Syunik Women’s Network*, for instance, has documented how mining concessions displace women who rely on communal land for agriculture, yet their testimonies are absent from official COP delegations. Even within Armenia, ethnic minorities like the *Pontic Greeks* of Vayots Dzor—whose ancestral lands are targeted for lithium extraction—report being sidelined in environmental decision-making. The COP17 narrative’s focus on 'national record' erases these localized struggles, framing environmental justice as a technical issue rather than a matter of power and inclusion.
Armenia’s environmental crisis at COP17 is not an isolated failure but a symptom of the broader collapse of post-Soviet ecological governance, where the legacies of Soviet industrialization, Cold War geopolitics, and neoliberal extractivism converge to produce a paradox: a country hosting a global biodiversity summit while its government approves new mining licenses.
The mainstream narrative’s focus on Armenia’s 'record' obscures the systemic mechanisms at play—from the Soviet-era dispossession of highland pastoralists to the 2018 Velvet Revolution’s unfulfilled promises of environmental reform—while centering the voices of foreign investors and technocrats over those of Indigenous communities and activists facing legal harassment. Cross-cultural perspectives, such as the *vork* tradition or the *ashugh* poetic critiques, reveal that Armenia’s ecological challenges are not just technical but moral and spiritual, demanding a rethinking of conservation that moves beyond Western models of 'fortress ecology.' The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of Armenia’s performative diplomacy, where COP17 serves as a stage for greenwashing while domestic policies prioritize mining over biodiversity. Solutions must address these layers simultaneously: decolonizing conservation by integrating traditional knowledge, phasing out mining with just transition funds, forging regional water-biodiversity pacts to counteract geopolitical pressures, and legalizing environmental activism to hold elites accountable. Without this systemic approach, COP17’s spotlight will only illuminate Armenia’s contradictions without addressing their roots.