The Current Column

Download

Biodiversity COP

Indigenous Peoples Need More Than a Seat at the Table


The Current Column (2026)

Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), The Current Column of 28 October 2026

Taking part is not enough. What the Biodiversity COP can learn from climate negotiations about including Indigenous peoples and local communities.

Bonn, 28 October 2026. There is clear evidence that land and ocean use practices and knowledges of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC) have contributed significantly to biodiversity conservation. A study from WWF even shows that 91% of IPLC lands are in “good or moderate ecological condition”.

At this year’s Biodiversity COP17 in Yerevan, Indigenous participation is a key topic when negotiators discuss the implementation of Article 8(j) on integrating “Traditional knowledge, innovations and practices”. The provisional agenda promises negotiations on the specifics of how the newly established permanent subsidiary body tasked with its implementation (SB8J) will operate.

While the SB8J is the first permanent body on the topic among the three Rio Conventions, it builds on earlier efforts to strengthen Indigenous participation. Within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), it is replacing a non-permanent working group established in 1998. Its establishment gives Indigenous Peoples a more secure position within the Convention, reflecting a long-running struggle to institutionalise participation and influence. Within the CBD’s climate counterpart, the UNFCCC, the non-permanent Facilitative Working Group (FWG) is mandated to advance Indigenous issues and is notable for its equal representation of state and IPLC stakeholders.

Negotiators at the Biodiversity COP can take inspiration from the FWG’s successes and failures. According to a report by the group, it has been able to more meaningfully engage with the climate negotiations and provide key inputs that contributed to policy design. However, a considerable number of challenges remain, such as visa restrictions, language barriers and limited financial resources to take part at COPs.

Importantly, some of the most serious challenges to the FWG’s functioning are systemic, unlikely to be fixed within a working group, or a subsidiary body. One of these is a fundamental misalignment between the UNFCCC’s metrics- and market-based approach to governing climate change, and a more relational understanding of the environment held by many IPLC, which considers humans as embedded in webs of life and not separate from nature. These can be difficult to reconcile in a governance setting that seeks to quantify and assign economic value to nature and addresses interrelated concerns of climate, biodiversity, and land degradation in separate Rio Conventions.

Another issue is the framing of Indigenous peoples as primarily vulnerable, rather than as actors with agency, who could actively contribute to multilateral processes. While one of the FWG’s primary functions is to build the capacity of Indigenous peoples to engage in the climate convention’s processes, the agency of any non-state actor within an institution set up by and for national governments will be limited. Despite equal representation within the working group, it remains a non-voting body within a large institution.

Whatever shape the SB8J takes, it will be different from the FWG. It is a permanent body, set up as a “Party-led process”. It is situated within a different Convention, with a longer history of formally engaging with IPLC issues. Yet both bodies operate within an intergovernmental institution, in which decision-making power ultimately lies with national governments.

What the SB8J can learn from the FWG is that its establishment is not a sufficient condition for true participation. IPLC issues and agency require space and resources across COP agendas and governance levels. This includes access to global biodiversity finance mechanisms and territorial rights at the national level. Promising national examples are the Peasant Reserve Zones in Colombia. They were established in 1994 to stabilise the forest frontier, to promote sustainable resource management and to reduce land concentration. Some peasant organisations consider them as a strategic instrument to maintain territorial autonomy and to promote agroecological land-use as alternatives to agro-industrial expansion. Today more than 64 Peasant Reserve Zones exist contributing to biodiversity conservation and preserving peasant farming practices. However, such approaches presume that conservation authorities recognise local communities' relational conservation approaches, do not stipulate conservation metrics and “acknowledge that all actors bring capabilities, experiences and perspectives that are useful for conservation”.

The broader lesson for the Biodiversity Convention is that inclusion cannot be confined to the institutions designed to promote it. They can open spaces for more equal exchange and bring Indigenous and local knowledge into multilateral processes in innovative ways. But meaningful inclusion depends on what happens beyond these spaces: Whether IPLC can influence decisions, at least those impacting their territories, whether they are financially supported to participate in COPs as well as to manage their territories, and whether they retain this influence across governance levels.

About the IDOS authors

Further IDOS experts