Landmark Global Biodiversity Agreement Enshrines Rights of Indigenous Peoples--Providing Hope for Bol

Landmark Global Biodiversity Agreement Enshrines Rights of Indigenous Peoples—Providing Hope for Bolivia’s Guarani
1/11/2023 by Juana Vera-Delgado


Guaraní indigenous women dance with then-U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon during a visit to the Santa Rita community, in Concepcion, Bolivia, on June 13, 2014. (Aizar Raldes / AFP via Getty Images)

After more than four years of negotiations, on Dec.19, 2022, nearly 200 nations adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—a binding agreement to protect at least 30 percent of the world’s biodiversity within 2030. The agreement represents a significant step forward towards rights-based, gender just and socially equitable biodiversity conservation. The agreed text not only recognizes Indigenous territories as an important, autonomous contribution to area-based conservation, but it also includes other targets—like calling on governments to recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples, local communities and women in biodiversity conservation. The framework admittedly isn’t perfect. It does not wholly incorporate Indigenous peoples’ demand for their lands and territories to be fully recognized as a category of conserved area. But it’s still decisive for the recognition and respect of collective, environmental, cultural and gender rights of Indigenous peoples—women, in particular.

Every day and for hundreds of years, Indigenous men and women, environmental and human rights defenders are confronted with threats—from intimidation, physical attacks, rapes and murders, to prohibitions on free expression and association and forced displacement from their territories. Yet, there is hope that the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework will help to reign in these violations and return stolen lands to communities and ensure the rights of Indigenous peoples across the world.

One such community that continues to struggle against generations of injustice is the Guaraní of Laguna Chica, Bolivia, located in the Yaku Agüa territory by Bolivia’s southern border with Argentina. There, recent legal victories have given the Guaraní people hope that more than 500 years of colonization, enslavement and environmental destruction of their lands can be overturned, as recounted in their recently published book: Laguna Chica: The First Ancestral Territory Longed and Consolidated by the Organized Force of the Guaraní Women of Yaku Igüa-Tarija, written by one of their women leaders. “Now we live freely, without bosses,” said Mrubicha Modesta Medina, a Guaraní traditional leader. In July 2019, after years of struggle, Guaraní women of regained access to areas of their ancestral land robbed from them and converted into industrial farmlands and cattle ranches.

Medina’s words weigh heavy with meaning in light of her community’s historical struggle against colonization and patriarchy, which has kept the Guaraní Indigenous People enslaved and dispossessed of their lands since the Spanish invasion in the late 16th century. Women’s gender and cultural and environmental justice movements have been at the forefront of the community’s struggle, epitomizing the collective capacity of Indigenous Peoples in their unwavering fight for redistributive justice. Their story, as told in the book, teaches us that it is possible not only to dream but also to bring about real, transformative change. Under the weight of a history of dehumanization and oppression, the women of Laguna Chica armed themselves with courage and bravery to fight back and reclaim their community land (Tierras Comunitarias de Origen, or TCO) from the “landowners” and cattle ranchers. These “terratenientes” displaced them from their territories, appropriated their lands and planted monoculture crops of soybean and corn, destroying the forest and biodiversity ecosystems.

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https://msmagazine.com/2023/01/11/guarani-bolivia-indigenous-native-women-kunming-montreal-global-biodiversity-framework/