Rome meeting to assess implementation of the
CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
Parties, intergovernmental agencies, conservation NGOs, indigenous
peoples and local communities, and civil society organisations
will meet in Rome on 11-15 February 2008 to assess implementation
of the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA) for the
period 2004-2007. The programme of work, which was adopted by
COP7 in 2004 in Malaysia, contains various activities requesting
Parties to increase the coverage of protected area while respecting
the rights of indigenous and local communities and ensuring their
full and affective participation. It also calls for Parties
to review the governance aspects of protected areas and to broaden
them to include collaborative management of protected areas (CMPA),
the recognition and support for community conserved areas (CCAs),
and the right to Free Prior Informed Consent for indigenous peoples
in cases of potential resettlement.
COP7 also established the CBD Ad-Hoc
Working Group on Protected Areas (WGPA), tasked with providing
guidance to Parties concerning the implementation of the PoWPA
and to assess its implementation. The Rome meeting is the second
meeting of the WGPA and is
charged with reviewing the implementation of the PoWPA and exploring
options for mobilizing adequate and timely financial resources
for its implementation. These matters are of great importance
to indigenous peoples and local resource users as they deeply
affect their relationship with protected areas in international
policy making and in practice on lands and territories inhabited
and/or utilized by indigenous peoples and local communities. A
number of indigenous peoples and local community organizations
and support NGOs will attend the meeting with the objective to
ensure that indigenous peoples’ views and input are taken into
consideration in the review of implementation of the Programme
of Work, in recommendations on how to improve its implementation
and in addressing options for mobilizing financial resources for
its implementation. Reports and case studies on national situations
and the implementation of the PoWPA are being prepared by indigenous
peoples and local costal communities.
Although the data on implementation
of the Programme of Work will be discussed and analysed in details
in the Rome meeting, preliminary data from indigenous organizations
indicate that there has been insufficient attention paid to the
recognition of indigenous and local communities’ rights, their
participation, and to governance issues in general. This seems
to also be confirmed by data collected by the CBD secretariat
in preparation for the meeting. One of the official documents
prepared for the meeting, states that, while there
has been notable progress in achieving the targets related to
expansion of the coverage of protected areas (2,300 new terrestrial
protected areas and 50 new marine protected areas, covering approximately
50 million hectares have been established since 2004), limited
progress has been made, inter-alia, with respect to the
targets of the Programme of Work most relevant to indigenous peoples
and local communities, such as goals 2.1 (Equity and benefit sharing),
2.2 (Involvement of indigenous and local communities), 3.4 (Sustainable
finance), 3.5 (Public awareness and participation), 4.1 (Minimum
standards) and 4.2 (Protected-area management effectiveness).
From
this data, it can be hinted that, the so-called ‘conservation
paradigm shift’ from conventional conservation (which infringes
on human rights and does not sufficiently address the social aspects
of nature conservation) to participatory conservation (which respects
the rights and emphasizes the participation of indigenous peoples
and local communities), which was hailed as the way forward for
biodiversity conservation following the World Parks Congress of
2003 and the CBD COP7 of 2004, is still far from being realized.
However,
participants in the Rome meeting are also expected to identify
obstacles obstructing the implementation of the Programme of Work
and to recommend actions to overcome such obstacles. It is hoped
that the goodwill to develop actions to overcome the obstacles
preventing the implementation a rights-based approach to conservation
will prevail so that more socially just conservation policies
and practices can finally be implemented.
By
Maurizio Ferrari, Forest Peoples Programme,
maurizio@forestpeoples.org
