New set of human rights principles aims to end displacement and abuse of Indigenous people through ‘fortress conservation’

For more than a century, conservationists have worked to preserve natural ecosystems by creating national parks and protected areas. Today the Earth faces a global biodiversity crisis, with more than 1 million species at risk of extinction. This makes it even more important to conserve places where at-risk species can thrive.

In 2022, governments around the world committed to protect 30% of the entire planet by 2030, nearly doubling the current coverage. They also agreed to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples, whose lands contain large shares of the world’s remaining natural ecosystems.

But such promises have often been broken. Historically, governments and private conservation organizations have typically insisted that only pristine, human-free parks can properly conserve nature. In many places, including U.S. national parks, authorities have forcibly removed people who lived on and cared for those lands for centuries.

I am a lawyer and law professor, and my work has focused on human rights, environmental law and areas where they overlap. From 2012 to 2018 I served as the first United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment. In my work, I have heard many reports of human rights abuses associated with these forced displacements, including murder, rape and torture.

To address this problem, the U.N. Environment Programme convened a series of meetings starting in 2022 that brought together representatives of Indigenous peoples, conservation organizations, rights-based organizations and funders. The result is a set of core human rights principles for conservation organizations and funders, which will be formally announced on Dec. 13, 2024.

The history of ‘fortress conservation’

Indigenous peoples and others who live on undeveloped lands are on the front lines of battles against illegal mining, logging and poaching. They are generally more effective than governments at preventing deforestation and loss of living species, and they do so far more cost-effectively.

Studies confirm that protecting the human rights of Indigenous peoples results not only in better lives for these communities but also better conservation of the lands where they live.

However, governments often do not recognize Indigenous peoples’ legal rights in their ancestral lands. And Indigenous communities receive only a small fraction of the billions of dollars directed toward climate and biodiversity protection.

Making matters worse, Indigenous people often are evicted from their land in the name of conservation. This practice began in the United States in the late 19th century with the creation of Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks. Among the peoples who lost their homes were the Miwok from Yosemite and the Shoshone from Yellowstone.

Over the following century, the pursuit of what came to be called “fortress conservation” spread around the world. Colonial European powers took this strategy to Africa and Asia; after countries there became independent, international conservation organizations based in North America and Europe continued to push their governments to create national parks on the Yosemite and Yellowstone models. Researchers estimate that millions of people were dispossessed, suffering physical harm and, in many cases, the loss of their cultures.

Stewards at risk

In recent years, growing evidence that fortress conservation is both morally repugnant and ecologically ineffective has led nations to formally reject it. At an international conference in 2003 in Durban, South Africa, conservationists adopted an action plan that promised to create and manage protected areas “in full compliance with the rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Nonetheless, many protected areas still prohibit Indigenous peoples from remaining in or returning to their ancestral homes. When they try to return, park rangers treat them as criminals. In some cases the rangers, who are often poorly trained, abuse them further by beating, torturing or even killing them.

In 2019, news reports publicized allegations of abuses against Indigenous communities in parks in Asia and Africa that were supported by the World Wildlife Fund, one of the largest global conservation groups. The increased attention led to multipleinvestigations, congressional hearings and suspension of millions of dollars in U.N. and U.S. government funding to the organization for projects in the Congo Basin.

Investigators found that rangers in Salonga National Park, the largest park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, regularly punished local residents by beating them with sticks, bayonets and the butts of weapons and engaging in sexual abuse. Investigators there also heard multiple allegations of rape and murder.

The World Wildlife Fund was not accused of encouraging or participating directly in such abuses, but it co-managed Salonga and paid its rangers. An independent panel of experts, on which I served, concluded that the organization had failed to effectively prevent or respond to the violations and had continued to fund the rangers even after learning about the allegations. Since then, stories of similar abuses have continued to proliferate.

In 2024, for example, Human Rights Watch reported on allegations of violent evictions of Indigenous Chong residents by a conservation organization, Wildlife Alliance, that co-manages a conservation project in Cambodia’s Cardamom National Park. And rangers working for African Parks, a private conservation organization that manages more than 20 national parks in 12 African countries, were accused by human rights organizations of beating and sexually assaulting Baka Indigenous people in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo.

Human rights principles for conservation

Conservation is not fundamentally at odds with human rights. Many Indigenous peoples, conservation organizations and others are trying to replace fortress conservation with a truly inclusive approach that safeguards human rights and the environment.

For the past two years, I have worked with people from many different organizations, under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Programme, to clarify human rights principles that we believe should apply in conservation. Our focus is on affecting the behavior of private conservation organizations and funders, who play critical roles but often receive far less scrutiny than governments.

Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Nature Conservancy funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in financial and technical support from donors in wealthy nations to protected areas around the world. In many cases, they manage or co-manage parks directly.

The principles that will be announced on Dec. 13, 2024, are not binding, but they reflect and summarize widely accepted human rights standards. They are based on key concepts that urge conservation organizations and funders to:

• Adopt commitments to respect human rights.
• Embed the commitments in their work.
• Institute processes to ensure that they identify and address human rights concerns.
• Avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses.
• Use their influence to try to ensure that their partners, including government agencies, do not engage in abuses themselves.

In particular, the principles call on conservation organizations and funders to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples, including their right to decide whether to give their free, prior and informed consent for conservation initiatives and projects.

The principles have already been supported by more than 70 organizations and individuals, including the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the U.N. special rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment.

More remains to be done, including creating a regular conference to bring conservation organizations and funders together with Indigenous peoples to jointly address issues of conservation and human rights. But these principles are an important step toward greater protection for nature and the people who live closest to it.

John H. Knox has worked with the UN Environment Programme in the development of the Core Human Rights Principles for Private Conservation Organizations and Funders. From 2012 to 2018, he served as the first UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment. In 2019-20 he served on a panel of independent experts reviewing allegations of human rights abuses in national parks in Africa and Asia.