来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2022年4月16日
Much of Earth’s most biodiverse land surface is already extremely well-protected – it just isn’t formally recognised as such. Across the world, from the Arctic to the South Pacific Ocean, some 80 per cent of Earth’s remaining biodiversity is thought to be in territories managed and owned by Indigenous peoples.
地球上大部分生物多样性最丰富的陆地表面已经被保护得非常好了——只是还没有被正式承认而已。在世界各地，从北极到南太平洋，地球上约80%的现存生物多样性被认为是在原住民管理和拥有的领土上。
About 7 per cent of the land listed in the World Database of Protected Areas maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme is Indigenous, but another 17 per cent of Earth’s surface is owned, occupied or managed by Indigenous people and local communities, says Eric Dinerstein, former chief scientist at WWF. “Indigenous groups do a better job of protecting biodiversity than governments do,” he says. If you add it all up, he says, we have arguably already exceeded the crucial target of protecting 30 per cent of Earth’s land surface.
世界自然基金会（WWF）前首席科学家埃里克·迪内尔斯坦表示，国际自然保护联盟（IUCN）和联合国环境规划署维护的世界保护区数据库中列出的土地中，约有7%属于原住民，但地球表面另有17%是原住民和当地社区拥有、占用或管理的。“原住民群体在保护生物多样性方面比政府做得更好，”他说，如果你把所有这些加起来，我们可以说已经超过了保护地球陆地表面30%的关键目标。
The problem is that Indigenous land claims often aren’t recognised by governments. “We should be doing everything we can to finance and empower Indigenous groups to have sovereignty over their lands,” says Dinerstein. “That would be the cheapest thing to do by far, and have the biggest effect.”
问题是，原住民的土地所有权往往得不到政府的承认。迪内尔斯坦说：“我们应该尽一切努力为原住民群体提供资金，并赋予他们对自己土地拥有主权的权利。这将是迄今为止最省钱的做法，但效果却最大。”
Indigenous people are often under-represented and marginalised at international environmental summits. At last year’s IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseilles, France, an officially organised group of Indigenous communities participated for the first time. At the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, though, they were once again pushed to the sidelines.
原住民在国际环境峰会上往往代表不足，并被边缘化。去年在法国马赛举行的世界自然保护联盟世界保护大会上，一个官方组织的原住民社区团体首次参加了会议。然而，在英国格拉斯哥举行的COP26气候大会上，他们再次被推到了一边。
Biodiversity negotiations have traditionally been more inclusive. Since 1996, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity has had a seat at the negotiating table, and a spokesperson for the Convention on Biological Diversity says that it is “committed to the effective participation of Indigenous peoples... in recognition of their fundamental role in the successful implementation of the new framework”.
生物多样性谈判历来更具包容性。自1996年以来，国际原住民生物多样性论坛一直在谈判桌上占有一席之地，《生物多样性公约》的一位发言人说，该论坛“致力于原住民的有效参与……承认他们在成功实施新框架中的基本作用”。
Indigenous peoples’ participation was also a key part of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which ran from 2010 to 2020. Along with all the others, that target was missed, though there were some isolated wins: in 2018, for example, Costa Rica enshrined a mechanism to consult its Indigenous groups over any action that would affect them. Brian O’Donnell at the Campaign for Nature says that negotiations have made progress on Indigenous rights, but there is still room for improvement. And of course, as many Indigenous people know only too well, just because a deal is signed doesn’t mean it will be honoured.
原住民的参与也是2010年至2020年爱知县生物多样性目标的重要组成部分。与其他所有目标一样，这一目标也未能实现，尽管取得了一些孤立的胜利：例如，2018年，哥斯达黎加确立了一种机制，就任何可能影响原住民群体的行动与原住民群体进行协商。自然运动组织的布莱恩·奥唐奈表示，关于原住民权利的谈判已经取得了进展，但仍有改进的空间。当然，正如许多原住民非常清楚的那样，仅仅因为签署了一项协议并不意味着它就会被遵守。