Elevating Indigenous Knowledge for Pandemic and Epidemic Prevention
Maria Antonia Tigre, Director for Latin America for GNHRE. Her academic research can be found here. She can be reached at @toniatigre.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated to us how human health and nature are interconnected. Environmental concerns are deeply interwoven with the pandemic. Amid the devastation caused by COVID-19, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of a healthy environment in combating disease and preventing future pandemic and epidemic outbreaks. Increased deforestation, forest fires, and biodiversity loss have resulted from measures taken in response to the pandemic. Additionally, lockdown has led to reduced enforcement and governmental monitoring, which allowed deforestation rates to rise.
The COVID-19 pandemic forces us to reconsider a new reality: it invites a holistic concept of peace that embraces present and future generations of humans and all other living beings. Should we continue with the same practices where nature is primarily a commodity? Or should we transition towards a new reality, where established concepts are further developed and strengthened to expand the protection of natural resources?
Inviting Indigenous communities as a central voice in re-imagining human-nature relationships and international environmental law
We can draw essential lessons from Indigenous populations as we consider how states can recover from the devastating effects of COVID-19. Indigenous groups are at the core of our response to the pandemic and its future, having an ancestral relationship with nature and land. Yet, despite an evolving jurisprudence, Indigenous claims are often excluded from the mainstream dialogue. Although this pandemic has had devastating effects on Indigenous groups, they play a significant role in helping prevent future pandemics and must be included in the conversation moving forward. Nevertheless, inadequate responses to COVID-19 have allowed the disease to spread to Indigenous communities.
Indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge and philosophical foundations indicate how the anthropocentric discourse of nature as a service provider needs to shift to an Earth-centered dialogue of nature as a free and autonomous agent, independent of humans. The reinterpretation of traditional theories provide an innovative exchange that contributes to a different framing of human-Earth relationships in law and policy debate. In 2021/2022, diplomats gather to negotiate a new political declaration on environmental protection. This contribution provides a unique perspective to this negotiation: one that investigates how, despite our differences, we share deep care for our natural environment in ways that should finally be reflected in international environmental law.
Indigenous communities and prevention pandemics
Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease, meaning it transferred from an animal species to the human population due to the destruction of natural habitats like forests, which brought the virus closer to humans. As a zoonotic disease, biodiversity protection is at the core of any response to address this pandemic and prevent future ones. To avoid more zoonotic ‘spillovers’, we need to rethink and reshape the human-nature relationship and its consequences on biodiversity loss. The first step is addressing deforestation and land-use changes so that ecosystems such as the Amazonia do not become the birthplace of the next pandemic. Safeguarding the rights of Indigenous communities needs to be at the core of this response. Indigenous communities in Latin America are central to reducing deforestation in the Amazon region. A recent study found a significant correlation between rising deforestation and the transmission of Covid-19 in Indigenous communities in Brazil. In particular, it found that deforestation-inducing activities, such as illegal mining, sparked conflicts that resulted in furthering virus transmission in already vulnerable populations.
Former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, recently noted the role of Indigenous communities in the Global Biodiversity Framework to be adopted in October by the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The remaining natural ecosystems are found primarily on Indigenous land. A recent study showed that Indigenous Peoples manage or have tenure rights over a quarter of the world’s land surface and intersects about 40% of all terrestrial protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes. This study supports recognising Indigenous Peoples’ right to land, benefit sharing and institutions, as it is essential to meeting local and global conservation goals.
Seizing the opportunity of the pandemic
The pandemic provides the opportunity to reflect on the nature-society relationship. Specifically, it allows us to analyse how the constant pressure on the limited resources of the planet has led to a natural crisis, facilitating the spread of new viruses once controlled by natural barriers, which are no longer as strong. Providing rights to Indigenous communities and recognizing their intrinsic relationship with nature is at the core of a path towards the future. Increasing forest governance by Indigenous and Tribal peoples provides an opportunity to reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is essential when the resilience of forests worldwide, especially the Amazon rainforest, is decreasing by the minute. The best way to protect nature is to protect the human rights of those who live there, as the remaining natural ecosystems are largely found on Indigenous peoples’ lands. Yet the assault on Indigenous peoples and their lands have increased even more during the pandemic.
What role for the law?
The timing of this discussion is critical, as it follows a string of cases from the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) and some national courts in which the right to a healthy environment and the associated rights of Indigenous communities to preserve their lands and natural resources have come to the forefront. Adopting a stronger right to Indigenous territory in tandem with a right to a healthy environment could help secure Indigenous rights, as protected in the IAHRS. It is essential to adopt a new ethical framework for the progressive development of international environmental law within the IAHRS framework.
What needs to be done?
If we want to be better prepared for the emerging and continuing environmental challenges, we need to rethink our core philosophical values, which, in turn, reflect on our legal framework of environmental protection. Given how Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and forest governance have proven invaluable in protecting our biodiversity, it is essential to invite them as a core voice in the political debate. This involves broadening the lens through which we look at our international legal framework and understanding a wide range of cultural perspectives. One way to do so is through the harmony with nature framework lens, which follows an eco-centric approach. Hopefully, the Covid-19 pandemic is the wake-up call the world needed for more proactive protection of the biodiversity we have left.