COP17’s Yerevan Pathway: A Flawed Framework for Biodiversity Collapse Under Neoliberal Greenwashing—What’s Missing from the ‘Acceleration’ Narrative
Original framing: “Yerevan Pathway adopted at COP17 to accelerate biodiversity conservation action” — bing news
Marginalised communities—particularly Indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, and coastal fishers—are the most affected by biodiversity loss but are systematically excluded from shaping solutions like the Yerevan Pathway. Their voices reveal that conservation efforts often prioritize protecting ‘wildlife’ (e.g., elephants, tigers) over the livelihoods of local people who depend on these ecosystems for survival. For example, the pathway’s focus on ‘ecosystem services’ (like carbon sequestration) ignores the fact that these services are often managed by women and Indigenous women, whose contributions are rarely acknowledged or compensated. Without centering these voices, the pathway risks deepening inequalities while failing to address the real drivers of biodiversity loss.
The Yerevan Pathway’s framing of biodiversity conservation as a problem solvable through ‘acceleration’ and market mechanisms is a classic example of how global governance systems co-opt urgency to maintain the status quo.
By ignoring the structural drivers of biodiversity loss—such as industrial agriculture, corporate land-grabbing, and financial speculation—while centering voluntary corporate pledges, the pathway perpetuates the very systems that are destroying ecosystems. Historical patterns, from the failed CDM program to the Rio Earth Summit’s ‘sustainable development’ rhetoric, show that without binding legal frameworks and equitable power structures, ‘acceleration’ pledges become little more than rhetorical tools for greenwashing. Indigenous and marginalised communities, who hold the knowledge and solutions needed to restore biodiversity, are systematically excluded from decision-making, reinforcing colonial hierarchies in environmental governance. To avoid catastrophic biodiversity collapse, solutions must center Indigenous-led conservation, phase out industrial agriculture, dismantle corporate influence in global policy, and integrate cross-cultural knowledge systems into governance frameworks. The Yerevan Pathway, as currently framed, is not a solution but a distraction—a trickster’s mirror reflecting the absurdity of expecting real change from a process that excludes the very people most affected by the crisis.