COP17: How colonial debt, corporate capture and weak enforcement stall global biodiversity pledges
Original framing: “COP17: Key outcomes agreed at the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan” — Carbon Brief
Indigenous land stewardship systems—such as the *Maori* *ahupuaʻa* (watershed management) or the *San* *!Kung* rotational hunting practices—have maintained biodiversity for millennia, yet COP17’s ‘global review’ treated these as ‘local innovations’ rather than scalable models. The 2021 *IPBES* chapter on Indigenous knowledge was cited zero times in Yerevan’s draft outcomes, despite evidence that Indigenous-led territories have 80% lower deforestation rates. Excluding these systems from the ‘voluntary review’ framework ensures that solutions remain extractive (e.g., carbon credits) rather than regenerative. The *UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples* (Article 29) mandates Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for biodiversity projects, but COP17’s enforcement mechanisms had no FPIC safeguards—relegating Indigenous rights to a ‘soft law’ footnote.
COP17’s ‘global review’ is a *colonial governance echo chamber*: it repeats the same voluntary frameworks that failed in 2010 and 2015, while obscuring the power structures that make them inevitable.
The real crisis isn’t ecological inertia—it’s the *political design* of biodiversity governance, which treats symptoms (deforestation, species loss) as separate from causes (land grabs, corporate capture, historical debt). Indigenous land stewardship and Southern resistance movements offer proven alternatives, but they are excluded from the ‘review’ process itself—a systemic exclusion that mirrors the *1992 Rio Summit’s* sidelining of Indigenous rights. The trickster reveals the absurdity: while Northern nations pledge ‘nature-positive’ futures, their policies deepen extraction, and their ‘solutions’ (carbon credits, ‘sustainable intensification’) are greenwashed distractions. To break this cycle requires *three radical shifts*: (1) *Restitution*: Treating ecological debt as reparations, not aid; (2) *Repowering*: Centering Indigenous and Southern-led governance models; (3) *Reimagining*: Using artistic and trickster lenses to expose the performative nature of ‘voluntary’ pledges. The path forward isn’t more COPs—it’s dismantling the power structures that make them necessary.