A “Global Safety Net” to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth’s climate

The co-authors agree that Science Advances is not the vehicle for rhetorical arguments lacking grounding in science. Thus, we suggest this recently submitted letter is unworthy of publication. 

While the Dutta et al. letter offered an important perspective and was well-cited, this new letter seems to be attempting to initiate a zero-sum rhetorical debate absent any new scientific material. 

It is clear the writer did not read the Dinerstein et al. paper, nor did they appear to read or comprehend the thoughtful and lengthy response to Dutta et al. in the Burkart et al. commentary. 

The new letter has honed in yet again on the Schleicher et al. paper as justification for the continued rhetorical debate. This new attempt appears even though  the conclusions produced in the Schleicher et al. paper were derived from an outlandish land use scenario that distorted our actual methodology--clearly presented in the Sci Adv paper-- redefined to fit their narrative:  If 50% of every ecoregion is protected as they claim we suggested, a scenario would indeed result in the displacement of hundreds of millions of people. The contrast between the Dinerstein and Schleicher scenarios were clearly articulated in Burkart et al. Nowhere in the GSN paper or in others preceding it do we ever call for 50% of ALL 846 ecoregions to be protected or for new areas of protection be created from plantation agriculture or indigenous lands. By choosing where to locate new protected areas to better fit their narrative, the Schleicher et al team deliberately chose lands with high human population densities while we deliberately excluded populated areas and the built environment a priori before constructing the GSN.

The primary purpose of the Global Safety Net paper, as clearly stated, was to assess the extent of remaining lands designated in the existing scientific literature of importance for biodiversity and carbon storage, representing the work of hundreds of scientists.

It was also the clear intent of the Global Safety Net paper to highlight the importance of keeping people on the land, in particular Indigenous peoples, to achieve conservation outcomes. In other words, Dinerstein et al. implicitly calls for no displacement and highlights the need for safeguards to protect subsistence communities in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Were there instances of land grabs or other forms of human displacement that occurred during the nearly 30 years of the existence of the Convention on Biological Diversity? Yes, as pointed out by the Dutta et al. letter and concurred by our subsequent response. With more than 255,000 terrestrial protected areas today, is it all but impossible that some displacement did not occur. Yet, far larger numbers of people and communities in developing countries have been displaced by exploitative extractive industries or hydro projects than by conservation initiatives over this same interval. 

Is there a risk for future land grabs or other forms of human displacement during the next ten years? Yes, this is a threat, which is why legal safeguards for Indigenous peoples and local communities is a major discussion point in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. 

Based on the latest update to the World Database on Protected Areas, approximately 17% of the world’s lands represent existing protected areas (more than 1/3 of these lands have a sustained Indigenous presence). Another 14% of the world’s lands are Indigenous or communally held in areas of importance for biodiversity; a sustained human presence on these lands is vitally important. Another 19% of lands per Dinerstein et al. are of importance for biodiversity and carbon storage, but the vast majority of these lands are remote and uninhabited.

A future collaboration with experts in population demographics would be constructive to analyze potential impacts of expanding conservation scenarios, but these efforts need to be based on science, not rhetoric. 

Thank you, Eric, (on behalf of the co-authors).

The agreement shown in the correspondence below between Dutta et al and Butchart et al about the importance of places used by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities for conservation is welcome (1, 2). Rural communities have been marginalised by conservation too often. Recognising their importance is vital.

But significant differences remain that are glossed over or ignored in Butchart et al's response. Specifically, Dutta et al observe that Dinerstein et al (3) did not recognise the diversity of rural communities and assumed that 'a handful of indigenous leaders are a representative sample'. This point is ignored. Dutta et al refer to conservation's 'on-going legacies' of injustices. Butchart et al refer to these as a 'colonial legacy', something of the past, not the present.

Similarly Dutta et al note that historical experience of conservation suggests that 'good intentions can lead to negative outcomes for people'. Butchart et al fail to acknowledge this possibility. They claim, with respect to the Global Safety Net that '[n]ew conservation projects are more commonly developed through collaborative approaches among civil society groups, subnational governments, and local communities, employing a variety of approaches'. But this claim has no empirical foundation. It reflects the desire of the authors to focus on the synergies, not the risks. There are bound to be tensions. For example Dinerstein et al are careful to insist that no current agricultural areas will be altered by the Global Safety Net (3). But what about future agricultural needs? Other planning exercises show that this is precisely where future conflicts will lie (4).

The differences listed above are relatively slight and could be overcome them with a short data review exercise. But they appear to be underpinned by a deeper obduracy from advocates of the Global Safety Net. Simply put, their work fails to count the number of people who might be affected by their Net. We have no idea how many people, indigenous, local or otherwise, live in it. It would be easy to estimate their number, but the original paper does not do so, nor does Butchart et al's response.

Not counting people is a fundamental failure of recognition. It is surprisingly frequent in conservation prioritisation work (5). Yet Butchart and colleagues, bizarrely, chose to use their response to Dutta et al to attack one of the few attempts to count the number of people affected by conservation planning – this was a paper presented by Schleicher et al (6). Schleicher et al's work was an important effort to move the debate on, and showed that up to one billion people could be affected by conservation prioritisation exercises. More recent estimates suggest the number could be 1.8 billion people (4). But Butchart and colleagues engagement with Schleicher et al's work is flawed. They misrepresent it, by stating that this work 'assumes that area-based targets would be enacted through a top-down paradigm of "fortress" conservation'. It does no such thing. Further Butchart et al fail to heed the main message of this paper and offer alternative numbers of people affected by their plans.

There are two reasons why I call this failure of recognition 'fundamental'. First because recognition underpins all forms of justice. You cannot win rights, or redress of grievance unless you are recognised to exist. Invisibility is a foundation of injustice. Whether we are talking about domestic violence, child abuse, institutionalised racism, ageism, glass ceilings or conservation-induced poverty we have to recognise the problems exist, and the people affected by them, before there is any hope of justice. Therefore, unless the people present in places of 'conservation interest' are seen, they risk being marginalised, forgotten, overlooked and displaced. This has been one of the enduring themes of conservation history the world over (7, 8).

The second reason is that these large-scale conservation planning exercises are powerful. They use intricate models and big data to shed light on future scenarios. But, like all large data-bases and modelling exercises, they also obscure (9). Their light creates shadows. The omissions they make, their blind-spots, assumptions and spatial generalisations can conceal difference. They can make things disappear. We have to be attentive to these omissions before we place any faith in this modelling.

One such blindspot is the failure to count people. Currently Dinerstein, Butchart and their colleagues are in the curious position of insisting that people are important for conservation efforts, but show no interest in documenting how many might be affected by their grand plans. The sooner they resolve this contradiction, the more credible their contributions to conservation planning will become.

1. A. Dutta et al., Response to A "Global Safety Net" to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth's climate. ScienceAdvances, https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabb2824/tab-e-letters (2021).
2. K. Burkart et al., Response to Dutta et al. ScienceAdvances, https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabb2824/tab-e-letters (2021).
3. E. Dinerstein et al., A "Global Safety Net" to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth's climate. Science Advances 6, eabb2824 (2020).
4. J. R. Allan et al., The minimum land area requiring conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity. bioRxiv preprint, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/839977 (2021).
5. A. Agrawal et al., "An Open Letter to the Lead Authors of 'Protecting 30% of the Planet for Nature: Costs, Benefits and Implications.," (https://openlettertowaldronetal.wordpress.com/, 2021).
6. J. Schleicher et al., Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion people. Nature Sustainability 2, 1094-1096 (2019).
7. D. Brockington, R. Duffy, J. Igoe, Nature Unbound. Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas. (Earthscan, London, 2008).
8. W. M. Adams, Against Extinction. The Story of Conservation., (Earthscan, London, 2004).
9. P. West, J. Igoe, D. Brockington, Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas. Annual Review of Anthropology 35, 251-277 (2006).

According to our paper "A ‘Global Safety Net' to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth’s climate" (Dinerstein et al. 2020), 50.4% of the world's lands are of particular importance for the conservation of biodiversity and the preservation of ecosystem services (e.g. carbon storage), 35.4% of which overlap with Indigenous territories [1]. Indigenous Peoples (IP) have been managing and protecting these lands for hundreds, even thousands of years, resulting in rich, biodiverse ecosystems, maintaining vast stores of carbon, and other ecosystem services [2]. Their stewardship practices contrast with other management schemes, including some nationally designated Protected Areas (PAs), that continue to be degraded [3].

It is apparent that in order to achieve the high-level goals of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an Indigenous-led conservation agenda is needed [4]. Therefore, the UN post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) should actively support the expansion of land tenure rights as a primary means to achieving the goals of the CBD. The GBF should also provide clear safeguards to protect the integrity of tribal sovereignty and self-governance.

Yet, as the Dutta et al. commentary points out [x], governments have incorporated Indigenous lands into their area-based conservation targets without free, pior, and informed consent. In some cases, this has resulted in 'land grabs', in which lands are removed from customary management and put under government control under the guise of conservation, thus accelerating harmful land use practices [5]. The post-2020 GBF must provide safeguards against land grabs, and government parties should not incorporate Indigenous lands in area-based targets without the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples, alongside guarantees to preserve long-term Indigenous rights and custodianship. 

Civil society groups have pointed to the colonial legacy of conservation, warning of unintended consequences from the expandsion of area-based targets under the GBF. Some groups have even called for the abandonment of such targets. One paper cited as supporting evidence is entitled "Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion people" (Schleicher et al. 2019) [6]. While expanding area-based targets without safeguards could theoretically result in human displacement, we reiterate that the 50% scenario presented in the ‘Global Safety Net' (GSN) neither supports land grabs nor implies the need for human displacement. The GSN's geospatial model is fundamentally different from the model presented in the Schleicher et al. paper.

Specifically, the Schleicher et al. scenario interprets the 50% target as applying to each of the world’s 844 terrestrial ecoregions. Not surprisingly, this approach finds a massive potential for human displacement. In the scenario proposed by Dinerstein et al. (GSN), the extent of land to be protected is dependent upon remaining habitat, rather than the total area of each ecoregion. In India, for example, Schleicher et al. assume 50% protection of each of India's 20 major ecoregions, totaling 1.6 million km². If enacted, this approach would result in the displacement of hundreds of millions of people. In contrast, the GSN model starts with a geospatial inventory of all remaining unprotected natural lands in the region, avoiding areas of human settlement. According to the GSN, India has retained just 12.3% of its natural land, so protecting these areas would avoid human displacement [7].

The Schleicher et al. paper also assumes that area-based targets would be enacted through a top-down paradigm of “fortress” conservation. This, too, is contrary to the position presented in the Global Safety Net. New conservation projects are more commonly developed through collaborative approaches among civil society groups, subnational governments, and local communities, employing a variety of approaches [8]. Many of these initiatives are predicated upon strong Indigenous lend tenure rights to ensure the protection of important lands and waterways. Examples are found in Bhutan, Namibia, Nepal, Canada and other regions, where Indigenous communities with established land tenure, have voluntarily designated large portions of their territories, under tribal governance, for the primary purpose of ecosystem conservation [9].

This Indigenous-led conservation agenda could become a driving force in the post-2020 GBF. To assist this agenda, a mechanism linked to the framework should be provided, creating the space for Indigenous communities to make voluntary contributions to conserve their lands and waters, advancing the goals of the CBD while providing clear safeguards that strengthen, rather than diminish, indigneous land tenure rights and the standing of sovereign tribal governance over Indigenous territories. This mechanism could build upon previous efforts, such as the Indigenous & Community Conserved Area Coalition (ICCA) or the ‘Action Agenda for Nature and People’ [10], but would be differentiated as an autonomous, self-governed platform with strong legal safeguards provided by Indigenous leadership. Such a platform could equitably support an anticipated increase in public funding to Indigenous communities for the implementation of conservation and restoration initiatives.

The enormous potential of Indigenous lands to contribute to the conservation of biodiversity requires that the post-2020 GBF becomes a force for equality and inclusion. The GBF must maximize opportunities for Indigenous Peoples to directly participate in the process and to strengthen their land tenure rights through the lens of conservation. A concern is that a 30% by 2030 global target (30x30), while a step in the right direction, could be too low to account for the total spatial extent of IP lands that are of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services. According to the GSN, 29.7% of global land area is important for biodiversity (including existing protected areas, species rarity sites, high biodiversity areas, and large mammal landscapes), 40% of which overlaps with Indigenous territories. An additional 20.7% of global land area is important for carbon storage (additional intact wilderness areas and climate stabilization areas), 29% of which overlaps with Indigenous territories. These IP lands could be missed under a 30x30 global target.

A larger 50% conservation target for the post-2020 GBF, with strong safeguards and a mechanism for voluntary contributions from Indigenous Peoples, could increase the standing of IP communities in the Convention by recognizing the full role they have played and will continue to play in the conservation of biodiversity. A lesser target could inadvertently result in winners and losers, with many IP communities denied the opportunity to voluntarily designate lands for conservation under tribal sovereignty and self-governance, thereby strengthening land tenure. A 50% target is also what the science calls for, maximizing opportunities to reverse biodiversity loss and preserve the ecosystems services upon which all life depends.

[1] Dinerstein, E. et al. A ‘Global Safety Net' to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth’s climate. Science Advances (4), 2020. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb2824

[2] Tauli-Corpuz, V. et al. Cornered by PAs: Adopting rights-based approaches to enable cost-effective conservation and climate action. World Development (130), 2020. DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104923

[3] Wolf, C. et al. A forest loss report card for the world’s protected areas. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01389-0

[4] Mollett, S., & Kepe, T. Land Rights, Biodiversity Conservation and Justice: Rethinking Parks and People. Taylor & Francis, 2018.

[x] Dutta et al, eLetter comment.

[5] Ruckelshaus, M. H. et al. The IPBES Global Assessment: Pathways to Action. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 35(5), 2020. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2020.01.009

[6] Schleicher, J. et al. Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion people. Nature Sustainability (2), 2019. DOI:10.1038/s41893-019-0423-y

[7] Vynne, C. et al. Preserving nature does not require human displacement. One Earth, 2021. https://www.oneearth.org/preserving-nature-does-not-require-human-displacement/

[8] Locke, H. The international movement to protect half the world: Origins, Scientific Foundations, and Policy Implications. Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, 2018. DOI:10.1016/b978-0-12-409548-9.10868-1

[9] Dinerstein, E. et al. An Ecoregion-based approach to protecting half the terrestrial realm. Bioscience (67), 2017. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/bix014

[10] Sharm El-Sheikh to Kunming Action Agenda for Nature and People. UN Convention on Biological Diverstiy, 2019. https://chm.cbd.int/api/v2013/documents/8C4FA740-EC46-D61B-5561-97166511E462/attachments/Action%20Agenda_compressed.pdf

Title: Re-thinking the Global Safety Net: Local leadership in Global Conservation

Dinerstein et al.'s recent article "A Global Safety Net"' presents a spatial argument to conserve 50% of Earth's terrestrial area to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilise the climate (Dinerstein et al., 2020). Their contribution is showing where nature conservation can help tackle the climate and biodiversity crises simultaneously. These interrelated challenges have been dealt with separately for too long and we commend Dinerstein et al. on their efforts. It is especially significant because the authors propose a key role for Indigenous Peoples' (IPs) lands in the Global Safety Net (GSN) (Dinerstein et al., 2020). However, we have several concerns around the application of the GSN and the proposed role of Indigenous Peoples (IPs), Local Communities (LCs) and their lands within it.

The GSN approaches the role of IPs in a manner that could perpetuate historical and colonial injustices, by ignoring the long history of exclusion, state takeover of IPs' and LCs' lands (Mollett & Kepe, 2018; Tauli-Corpuz, Alcorn, Molnar, Healy, & Barrow, 2020). Through their customary practices IPs and LCs have already demonstrated both leadership and agency in biodiversity conservation across the world (Tauli-Corpuz et al., 2020). This has been documented through decades of research highlighting communities' ability to effectively manage local resources, particularly when granted substantial autonomy to direct management decisions (Forest Peoples Programme, International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, Indigenous Women's Biodiversity Network, & Centres of Distinction on Indigenous and Local Knowledge and Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020). Therefore, discussions around recognition of IPs, LCs and their lands must move beyond tokenistic and instrumental mentions. Otherwise, we risk the rhetoric of acknowledgment without meaningful rights to access agency and self-determination.

Dinerstein et al.'s call for securing IPs tenure "rights" is progress within conservation discourses. However, current rights (in this case over land) have roots in the past, and their equity continues to be shaped by historical-political processes of land tenure, amongst others (Mollett & Kepe, 2018). Therefore, we need to go beyond just calling for rights recognition, and suggest a "rights" framework that first and foremost address these legacies. There is increasing recognition that IPs and local communities should have rights to own and govern their lands and resources through traditional/customary institutions (Ruckelshaus et al., 2020). However, in most of the world this recognition lacks a legal basis, which further curtails their customary practices in the identified conservation areas. The absence of legal recognition through the enactment of existing laws to provide land ownership risks further expropriation, land grabbing and infringements by outside and more powerful actors, including conservationists (Mollett & Kepe, 2018). To illustrate, while only 10% of the earth is legally owned by IPs and local communities, they customarily manage 50% of earth's terrestrial land (Rights and Resources Initiative, 2015).

The promotion of a rights framework rooted in westernised and often colonial value systems also risks undermining collective governance and valuable local, traditional and Indigenous knowledge essential for positive biodiversity conservation and climate outcomes (Mollett & Kepe, 2018). Ultimately, it is in the best interest of both nature and humans to recognize the agency and self-determination of IPs and LCs to effectively govern their territories through secure and culturally appropriate tenure rights regimes (Ruckelshaus et al., 2020).

The GSN explicitly mentions the inclusion of IPs lands and territories as part of its core strategy. Yet, the GSN will also equally impact LCs, who together comprise at least 1 billion people (Schleicher et al., 2019) with distinct histories, politics and value systems. By lumping them together in one acknowledgement, global biodiversity objectives and science-based target setting fails to capture this richness in cultural diversity and views and also threatens to undermine their individual and collective autonomies (Fernández-Llamazares, Benyei, Junqueira, & Reyes-García, 2020). Linked to this is the concern of support or disagreements towards the GSN approach by the IPs and LCs. Although, it is challenging to incorporate the opinion of 1 billion people, we should not assume (as the GSN model does) a handful of Indigenous leaders are a representative sample.

Any conservation analysis that uses spatial data on habitat intactness, wilderness, or avoids places with high industrial pressure will disproportionately select the lands of IPs and other local and rural communities leading to an inequitable 'conservation solution' or map. This is because IPs live in the most remote and intact regions of the planet and have done so for millennia. In many cases, these regions are still intact only because of the ways IPs manage and protect their lands through their customary governance systems (Forest Peoples Programme et al., 2020), which is under acknowledged in the GSN. As such, the data used in global analyses such as the GSN can entrench global inequalities, power imbalances, and promote further injustices. Any global spatial analysis should aim to identify and be open about the potential perverse impacts it may have on people, especially the historically marginalized (Erbaugh et al., 2020).

Global analyses that support international target setting and the global conservation agenda are necessary and important. Yet the key question is how best to recognize, integrate and promote IPs rights? The history of conservation practice suggests that good intentions can lead to negative outcomes for people (Brockington & Wilkie, 2015). We therefore offer suggestions for the socially just achievement of the goals(with realignments around concerns we raise) outlined by Dinerstein et al. First, we need to move beyond token or instrumental mentions of IPs and their lands. IPs are not tools for implementing conservation plans, they should be partners in setting the global conservation agenda. We must acknowledge cultural diversity as central to the development of an effective conservation strategy. Failure to do so perpetuates top-down and colonial forms of conservation (Mollett & Kepe, 2018). Global analyses must engage with the real-world implications of any recommendations and interventions by focusing on those who could be negatively affected by them. As a result of conservation's on-going legacies, there is a need to understand and discuss how global data and analytical approaches could perpetuate these inequities, biases and injustices. Dinerstein et al recognize that promoting land rights is fundamental to conservation; however, there are real risks if the process of securing land rights is not co-led by IPs and LCs. Ultimately, it is important for scientists working on global level mapping to work on the ground with these groups as allies to avoid potentially negative and unjust consequences.

References

Brockington, D., & Wilkie, D. (2015). Protected areas and poverty. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 370(1681), 20140271. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0271

Dinerstein, E., Joshi, A. R., Vynne, C., Lee, A. T. L., Pharand-Deschênes, F., França, M., . . . Olson, D. (2020). A "Global Safety Net" to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth's climate. Science Advances, 6(36), eabb2824. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abb2824

Erbaugh, J. T., Pradhan, N., Adams, J., Oldekop, J. A., Agrawal, A., Brockington, D., . . . Chhatre, A. (2020). Global forest restoration and the importance of prioritizing local communities. Nature Ecology & Evolution. doi:10.1038/s41559-020-01282-2

Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Benyei, P., Junqueira, A. B., & Reyes-García, V. (2020). Participation in Biocultural Diversity Conservation: Insights from Five Amazonian Examples. In C. Baldauf (Ed.), Participatory Biodiversity Conservation: Concepts, Experiences, and Perspectives (pp. 165-183). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Forest Peoples Programme, International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, Indigenous Women's Biodiversity Network, & Centres of Distinction on Indigenous and Local Knowledge and Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. (2020). Local Biodiversity Outlooks 2: The contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities to the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and to renewing nature and cultures. A complement to the fifth edition of Global Biodiversity Outlook. Moreton-in-Marsh, England: www.localbiodiversityoutlooks.net

Mollett, S., & Kepe, T. (2018). Land Rights, Biodiversity Conservation and Justice: Rethinking Parks and People: Taylor & Francis.

Rights and Resources Initiative. (2015). Who Owns the World's Land? A global baseline of formally recognized indigenous and community land rights. Retrieved from Rights and Resources Initiative: http://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/GlobalBaseline_web.pdf.

Ruckelshaus, M. H., Jackson, S. T., Mooney, H. A., Jacobs, K. L., Kassam, K. S., Arroyo, M. T. K., . . . Ouyang, Z. (2020). The IPBES Global Assessment: Pathways to Action. Trends Ecol Evol, 35(5), 407-414. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2020.01.009

Schleicher, J., Zaehringer, J. G., Fastré, C., Vira, B., Visconti, P., & Sandbrook, C. (2019). Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion people. Nature Sustainability, 2(12), 1094-1096. doi:10.1038/s41893-019-0423-y

Tauli-Corpuz, V., Alcorn, J., Molnar, A., Healy, C., & Barrow, E. (2020). Cornered by PAs: Adopting rights-based approaches to enable cost-effective conservation and climate action. World Development, 130, 104923. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104923