“Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now” is the theme of this year’s International Human Rights Day. The focus is on the immediacy of human rights in our daily lives and their centrality to our collective future. They are also a central feature of conservation to protect the inherent dignity of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who frequently play an outsized role in safeguarding our planet’s ecosystems.
Sadly, human rights remain ignored by some governments and corporations and insufficiently embedded in global compacts on climate and biodiversity. Moreover, the disconnect between rhetoric and reality keeps human rights from being realized at the national and local levels.
In order to secure our collective future we require three key shifts, grounded in human rights, to address the interdependent crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and health (the risk we face in failing to acknowledge the “One Health” interlinkages between the health of people, animals, and nature).
The first is a global realignment that builds upon trust between different stakeholders and rights holders. The second is a financing shift that moves beyond mere recognition of deep inequities, or a finite view of resources, to one of shared prosperity. And the third is a shift where more governments and corporations recognize that human rights are not just legal obligations but a central part of nature-positive solutions.
We have emerged from two major global conferences this year intended to address our dire state of affairs on biodiversity, climate, and planetary health. The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (CoP16) was held in Colombia with some promise. CoP16 delegates heard a clarion call from a coalition of actors to change the relationship between humans and nature.
Make Peace with Nature: A Call for Life is a powerful declaration calling for sustainability to be accompanied by social and environmental justice, inclusive and informed environmental governance, and laws and public policies that are at peace with nature. Government delegates to CoP16 achieved an unprecedented outcome that includes Indigenous Peoples in a permanent body for decision making on traditional knowledge, while responding to calls for greater linkages between biodiversity, climate and health. To read the full article, click here. Author, Sushil Raj
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