The most important international institutions agree that 30% of the planet is classified as a “protected space” by 2030, either as a natural reserve, park, national monument or protected landscape. According to the latest data from the United Nations Environment Programme, today we have 17% of the Earth protected, with a total of 20 million km2.Ideia to play, Europe has 10 million km2. In other words, they have on the table the objective of doubling the area in this decade. The UN COP 15 on biodiversity, to be held in China in April, will be one of the strongest measures at the summit, and the month of September, which has already been held in Marseilles at the World Nature Congress, where the recommendations for governments have been set out at COP 15.

Its aim is, in itself, beautiful and courageous: to preserve biodiversity and to limit the violent disappearance of fauna and flora. However, in front of the Congress, environmentalist activists carried out the Notre terre counter-clock, notre nature, exposing the shadows of this beautiful objective. In addition to environmental criticism, the list of sponsors of the World Congress of Nature increases their mistrust to the extent that: Nutella, the GNP bank Paribas, Kering, Veolia, L´Oreal, JCDecaux and many other multinationals, all of them equally known as destroyers of nature. The World Congress of Nature mentioned a series of measures that focused on this 30% protection measure of the planet under the motto “Decolonize nature conservation”. “Turning a third of the planet into a protected area, they turn indigenous people into unauthorized hunters on their lands. It would be the biggest theft of land from Christopher Columbus,” explains Professor Frederic Hache of the Green Finance Observatory structure.

In short, as important as the objective is the path towards the objective. The road is not seen enough according to Hache and, precisely, most of the damage is on the way. Because, first of all, in these areas that are to be protected, and thanks to them, thousands and thousands of citizens live. If the classification was carried out, a total of 300 million citizens would be expropriated and mobilized, according to calculations by the Non-Governmental Structures (NGO) Survival, Minority Rights Group International and Rainforest Alliance.

It should be pointed out that the vast majority of those expelled from their lands are in the South of the world and that, moreover, many of them are indigenous citizens. Historian Guillaume Blanc has written about the colonial tone of this measure to deal with the climate emergency, L´invention du colonialisme vert. Pour en finir avec le mythe de l´Eden africain (“The invention of green colonialism. To end the myth of Ed African”), author of the book. Remember the following: “In Europe, UNESCO, IUCN and WWF are supporting the pastors and peasants who care for our mountains. But in Africa, it's been 60 years since violence is naturalizing territories: dehumanizing. Today there are still ten thousand farmers and shepherds exiled from the parks, under the eyes of international experts specialized in conservation. Millions more are punished for cultivating the land or raising their heads in it.”

80% of biodiversity is in the field of indigenous people

The authorities and the multinationals do not intend to transform a system that is sweeping the world. In this respect, the protection of the areas may be a means of tapping the desmasia. In any case, however, it will have to be done in respect of the rights of the people. The components of this guarantee are clear to Survival, an indigenous rights wrestler: Regulation for biodiversity should recognize and guarantee the collective and customary rights associated with land, hence measures for indigenous people and land-related citizens. In other words, the right to live from the ground, self-determination and the free acceptance and decision of those who previously lived in these spaces should be guaranteed, converted into reserves or parks.

80% of biodiversity is caused by land occupied by indigenous people. This fact serves to warn us that the human being does not destroy nature as such, but rather our capitalist system. “The most effective way to combat climate change is to place the rights of indigenous peoples over their lands at the heart of actions for nature and climate,” can be read on the website created on the occasion of the fire. The world authorities are going in the opposite direction: cutting off the connection with the land, exile, destroying its autonomy and subjecting it to the trading and monetary system. The term green colonialism is used to refer to this trend. In addition, the worst thing is that, once the area has been stolen, other citizens, both tourists and multinationals, most of the time come in for estractivism.

Legal trap “solutions based on nature”

Blance sees this land protection strategy as a way for the system to remain intact: “Those who protect are the ones who destroy. This is the inconsistency of sustainable development. They do not manage to save the shattered nature in their day and want to save it there, in the South.” This classification is part of the group “Nature-based solutions”. The notion used for the first time in 2009, since the COP21 meeting in 2015, is integrated in the ecological challenge strategy, a set of solutions based on the ecosystem. But this is a greenwashing or a green bleaching, because thanks to a price to nature and the compensation mechanism, the development of these green projects in the South allows the multinationals to continue with a polluting logic in the North.

Knowing this, it is easier to understand how those who exploit the planet to the bone marrow support the measure of protection of a third of the planet.