PROTECTING NATURE, RESPECTING RIGHTS

The report finds that most National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) fail to meaningfully engage Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and local communities (LCs) or secure their land tenure and rights. While traditional knowledge is more frequently recognized, there is a critical absence of safeguards to prevent human rights violations during conservation efforts. The assessment recommends a rights-based approach that treats IPs and LCs as full and equal partners, ensures direct access to finance, and enshrines legal safeguards and land tenure security within national biodiversity strategies.

• Consultation with Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and local communities (LCs) during the development of NBSAPs is limited; fewer than one third of the 27 assessed countries engaged these groups, and even fewer included women from these communities.
• Only 33% of the assessed NBSAPs include the securing of IP and LC land tenure and rights as a specific biodiversity conservation strategy, despite evidence that titled lands have lower deforestation rates.
• While 70% of assessed NBSAPs include strategies to recognize Indigenous and traditional knowledge, these efforts often prioritize the documentation of knowledge over the protection of knowledge rights or actual implementation.
• There is a total absence of clear safeguards or redress mechanisms in the 27 assessed NBSAPs to protect IPs and LCs from negative impacts, such as forced evictions or physical violence, resulting from conservation activities.
• IPs and LCs are listed as implementation partners in fewer than half of the assessed NBSAPs, and when included, they are typically cast as co-managers of protected areas rather than full and equal partners.
• NBSAPs generally lack robust monitoring and evaluation measures; none of the assessed documents disaggregated monitoring data by demographic characteristics to track impacts on specific groups like IPs and LCs.
• The report identifies a failure to mainstream NBSAP targets into national development plans or sectoral policies, which leads to conflicts between biodiversity conservation and other priorities, such as mining or energy projects.

APA

Forest Declaration Assessment (2023). PROTECTING NATURE, RESPECTING RIGHTS. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023NBSAPsReport1.pdf

Chicago

Forest Declaration Assessment. PROTECTING NATURE, RESPECTING RIGHTS. 2023. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023NBSAPsReport1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Forest Declaration Assessment |title=PROTECTING NATURE, RESPECTING RIGHTS |date=November 2023 |url=https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023NBSAPsReport1.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{forestdeclarationassessment2023protecting, author = {{Forest Declaration Assessment}}, title = {{PROTECTING NATURE, RESPECTING RIGHTS}}, institution = {Forest Declaration Assessment}, year = {2023}, month = nov, url = {https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023NBSAPsReport1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }