In the highlands of Pernambuco, Brazil, the Xukuru do Ororubá Indigenous people are bringing a damaged landscape back to life.

After generations of colonization, land occupation, deforestation, and intensive agriculture, their ancestral territory had suffered profound ecological damage. Forests had diminished, wildlife had disappeared, and springs had been compromised.

Through the Jupago Kreká Sacred Agriculture Collective, the community is combining ancestral knowledge, traditional agriculture, and forest restoration to regenerate its territory. According to the community, approximately 360 hectares are undergoing restoration, 14 springs are recovering, and wildlife is returning to previously degraded areas. Their work includes recovering ancestral seeds, cultivating medicinal plants, and passing traditional ecological knowledge to younger generations. For the Xukuru, protecting biodiversity is inseparable from protecting culture, livelihoods, and territorial rights.

Communities are already protecting and restoring biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and management practices, yet their contributions are not always formally recognized in conservation policies.

As governments gather in Yerevan, Armenia, from October 19-30 for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP17), their experience offers a reminder that biodiversity depends on the rights of the people who have protected and restored it for generations.

Yet there are growing concerns that hard-won protections for Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and local communities could be weakened during negotiations. Rather than recognizing and strengthening the conservation work these communities are already leading, as demonstrated by the Xukuru's restoration efforts, governments risk undermining the territorial rights and community governance that make these efforts possible.

Conservation Cannot Come at the Expense of Communities

Governments will undertake their first collective review of progress toward implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022. The framework includes conserving at least 30% of the world's land and waters by 2030. But achieving this target is not simply a matter of expanding protected areas. It also requires addressing who has the authority to govern the lands and ecosystems on which biodiversity depends.

For too long, conservation policies have treated Indigenous peoples and local communities as obstacles rather than rights holders and essential partners. This approach has too often resulted in exclusion, displacement, and restrictions on traditional ways of life.

The Xukuru people's restoration efforts demonstrate why recognizing Indigenous-led conservation matters. Communities are already protecting and restoring biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and management practices, yet their contributions are not always formally recognized in conservation policies. Governments must ensure that Indigenous and Traditional Territories are recognized as conservation areas in their own right, rather than treated as secondary to conventional protected areas.

Hard-Won Rights Are Not Negotiating Chips

The Global Biodiversity Framework includes commitments to respecting the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, achieved through years of advocacy by Indigenous leaders, community organizations, and allies.

Yet these protections could be diluted through negotiating language on the voluntary guidelines to achieve the Goal 2 and 3 of the Global Kunming Framework. Replacing a commitment that governments should act with language saying they may act weakens accountability. Treating Indigenous and Traditional Territories as merely complementary to conventional protected areas risks marginalizing community governance. Diluting references to free, prior, and informed consent threatens communities' ability to make decisions about their lands.

That is why the Rights and Resources Initiative and its partners have issued an open letter to CBD negotiators calling on governments to stop the rollback of hard-won rights protections at CBD COP17. Through the #StopTheRollbacks campaign, the coalition has........

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