Policy Brief

Beyond markets: how to achieve just and transformative biodiversity conservation

Hein, Jonas et al.
Policy Brief (25/2026)

Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23661/ipb25.2026

Conservation needs reform as current approaches have failed to halt biodiversity loss. Increasingly, environ¬mentalists are questioning whether market-based approaches and conventional policy instruments, particu¬larly protected areas, can make a substantial contribution towards mitigating the bio¬diversity crisis. Moreover, serious concerns about their equity and justice implications have been voiced by indigenous rights organisations, peasant movements and scholars.
In light of these concerns, this policy brief provides a number of suggestions on how to make biodiversity conservation more just, equitable and effective. It builds on discussions held during the sixth Enjust Conference “Offsetting Justice? Environmental justice in the age of market and militarized con¬servation”, which took place in Bonn from 3 to 5 December 2025. The conference brought together environmental justice scholars, political ecologists, activists as well as development and conservation practitioners from around the globe. 
Our reflections and proposals support policymakers, members of parliament, conservation practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs) at the local and regional levels in initiating reforms of the protected area system and other conservation mechanisms for more effective, trans¬parent and fair protection.

Key messages:
• Just conservation: Conservation policies that contribute to environmental justice have the greatest potential to achieve long-term, sustainable and legitimate conservation outcomes for people and the planet.
• Land rights-based conservation: Land rights reconfigure power relations and are a key pre¬requisite for environmental justice. Collective land titles such as Colombia’s Peasant Reserve Zones (ZRCs) are a promising instrument.
• Towards distributive justice by reforming conservation finance: IP&LCs should benefit more directly from forest, climate and biodiversity funding and should have a say in how money is spent in their communities. IP&LC-led funds and designated funding windows for IP&LCs are promising options.
• Basic Income for Nature and Climate (BINC): We suggest BINC as a promising measure to improve the livelihoods of IP&LCs and to overcome the transactional logic of market-based instruments. BINC compensates for past environmental injustices and enables recipients to make land-use decisions that are less influenced by precarity and market forces.
 
Professor Dr Fernanda Figueroa currently works at the Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Dr Lasse Loft is a senior scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Maano Ramutsindela is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cape Town and the UP-UCT Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations at the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. 
Georg Buchholz is team leader of the International Forest Policy sectoral project at GIZ, Germany.
Dr Juan Sebastián Vélez Triana is a postdoctoral researcher with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS / UCLouvain, Belgium, and a research associate at the Centre for Alternatives to Development (CEALDES), Colombia. 
Professor Dr Florian Dünckmann heads the Cultural Geography Research Group in the Department of Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dr Ina Lehmann is assistant professor of Governance of Global Biodiversity at the Environmental Policy Analysis section at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Professor Dr Silja Klepp is professor of Human Geography at Kiel University, Germany.
Dennis Schüpf is a PhD student in the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany.
Anne Rose Atkins is a doctoral candidate in the Social Geography of Coastal and Marine Areas working group at the Geography Department of Kiel University, Germany.
Dumisani Chirambo is the founder of Seeds of Opportunity in Malawi. 
Felice Diekel is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Engineering & Management at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Salome Gikonyo is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany. 
Dr Rina Mardiana is a lecturer in the Human Geography Study Program, Faculty of Social Sciences and Human Ecology, at IPB University in Bogor, Indonesia.
Dr Adnan Mirhanoğlu is an F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’Études de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement (CECID), Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.  
Kim Nierobisch is part of the coordination team of the EnJust Network for Environmental Justice, Germany. 
Kelly Peña is a PhD student at the Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Professor Dr Prakash C. Tiwari works at the Centre for Ecology Development and Research in Dehradun, India.