Will COP16 in Colombia strengthen Target 22 and spark text at COP30 in Brazil to protect environmental defenders?

Published by Brent Patterson on May 22, 2024May 22, 2024

The United Nations COP16 Biodiversity conference will take place this coming October 21 to November 1 in Cali, Colombia. Shortly afterwards, the UN COP29 Climate conference will take place November 11-22 in Baku, Azerbaijan. A year after that, COP30 will take place November 10-21, 2025, in Belém, Brazil.

Global Witness notes: “Around the world, those who speak out against the drivers of biodiversity loss – deforestation, pollution, land grabbing, mining and oil extraction – face alarming levels of violence and intimidation.”

These conferences could play a role in improving the protection of environmental defenders at risk for their actions in defence of the world’s biodiversity and climate. There are also serious systemic obstacles to consider.

COP16 in Colombia

In a new article, Global Witness also highlights: “Overall, Colombia has the highest cumulative number of defender killings since we started collecting data in 2012, with 60 defenders killed in the country in 2022 alone. …Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad [has] announced that COP16’s theme would be ‘Peace with Nature’, and stressed that the event will be ‘the people’s COP’, recognising the need for urgent action for both defenders and biodiversity.”

COP16 has the potential to build on Target 22 of the Global Biodiversity Framework reached almost two years ago at COP15 in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal on the unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk Nation in Canada. The “Global targets for 2030” include “the full protection of environmental human rights defenders.”

Alternative summit

Via Campesina has noted: “Within the framework of [COP16], the CLOC-Via Campesina will participate in an alternate space with social movements called the International Meeting Economies for Life (Ecoovida) 2024, organized by the Government of Colombia in Cali from October 22 to 26, 2024.”

The pathway to COP30 in Brazil

The Guardian has reported: “Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister [said Colombia] would use the summit to ensure nature was a key part of the global environmental agenda in the year building up to the climate Cop30 in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025, where countries will present new plans on how they will meet the Paris agreement.”

She says: “Although the climate is affecting biodiversity, nature is an answer to the climate crisis. It is not the only answer but it is a very important pillar and we want to position it very strongly to build towards Cop30 in Brazil.”

Canada at COP16

Today, Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, stated: “Canada [has] launched the Nature Champions Network—an international, ministerial-level group that advocates for the rapid implementation of the [Global Biodiversity] Framework and works to ensure that all countries deliver updated domestic biodiversity strategies by COP16 this fall in Colombia.”

The criminalization of Wet’suwet’en land defenders

Concern does exist though with respect to Canada’s commitment to Target 22 and “the full protection of environmental human rights defenders”, notably Indigenous land defenders on their sovereign territories within Canada who have challenged megaprojects – including the Coastal GasLink pipeline – backed by Canada.

Less than a month from now, on June 17-21 in Smithers, Indigenous land defenders Sleydo’ (Wet’suwet’en), Shaylynn Sampson (Gitxsan) and Corey Jocko (Mohawk) will be in court in Smithers, British Columbia for an ongoing abuse of process hearing for their resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

In their court application, these criminalized land defenders allege that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada’s national police force, and its specialized Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), applied  “disproportionate and excessive use of force” against them during militarized raids in November of 2021.

Cultural Survival, in their commentary on COP16, has cautioned: “Countries where Indigenous Peoples live will have to demonstrate how they have included their rights and interests as set out in the seven targets where they are mentioned.”

Target 22 also promises to respect Indigenous “cultures and their rights over lands, territories, resources, and traditional knowledge”. How can the continued operations of the RCMP C-IRG (now rebranded the Critical Response Unit/CRU-BC) be squared with Canada’s stated commitment to this target when the defenders who seek to uphold these rights face police snipers and lethal overwatch?

Disillusionment with COPs

Greta Thunberg dismissed COP27 in Egypt as “greenwashing” and described the text agreed to at COP28 in Dubai as “toothless”. To date the COP climate conference process has failed to recognize environmental defenders.

In its assessment of COP28, Global Witness noted: “Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, we documented the killings of at least 1,390 land and environmental defenders… In the run-up to COP28, we joined 150 organizations to call on the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] to recognize and protect defenders. And yet, there is not a single reference to land and environmental defenders in the final text.”

Will COP16 in Colombia spark a change on the crucial issue of the protection of frontline defenders at COP29 in Azerbaijan and COP30 in Brazil?  Or will it, as Dene land defender Melissa Daniels critiqued COP15 in Montreal, be “performative reconciliation” and a “colonial conservation rebrand”?