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  • Actions towards addressing the biodiversity crisis are promoted by recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities nurturing biological and cultural diversity in their daily life.
  • The shaping of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework is an opportunity to enable transformational change through human rights-based approaches.
  • Failure to adequately incorporate the protection of human and environmental rights defenders would mean risks not only for expanding violations of human rights, but also increased destruction of biodiversity.

A human rights-based approach (HRBA) in the context of biodiversity conservation, means that biodiversity policies, governance and management do not violate human rights. This can be achieved if those implementing such policies actively seek ways to support and promote human rights in their design and implementation.

The “Human Rights in Biodiversity Working Group ” established in Chiang Mai, 2020 have collaboratively compiled a human rights analysis brief on ”Draft One of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework” (NEW: available in Spanish).

The authors urge the Open-ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework to integrate, maintain and strengthen elements of a human rights-based approach in the final draft of the framework (at their 3rd meeting, 23 August – 3 September). As for now, the human rights-related advancements are not sufficient and without further improvement the framework risks falling short of its ambition to achieve transformative change.

The analysis brief was prepared by members of the “Human Rights in Biodiversity Working Group including Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), CBD Alliance, Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), ICCA Consortium, Natural Justice, SwedBio at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Tebtebba Foundation, WWF International, Friends of the Earth International, the CBD Women’s Caucus and Women4Biodiversity.

We invite you to learn more about the integration of HRBA in biodiversity contexts below.

Interested in reading further?

  • For more information on Human Rights approaches to conserving biodiversity read the newly released policy brief from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, David R. Boyd and Stephanie Keene August 2021 here. The Executive Summary can be found here.
  • For more information on the Thematic Workshop on Human Rights as enabling condition in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, held in Chiang Mai in February 2020, do take a look at the SwedBio webpage here.
  • For more information on previous inputs from the Human Rights in Biodiversity working group, see Human Rights in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework: Options for integrating a human-rights based approach to achieve the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity, available here.
2021-08-23