More than 30 years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the three Rio Conventions — the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) — remain the principal global frameworks addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, and land degradation. Yet the crises these Conventions seek to address do not occur separately in nature, nor are they experienced separately by Indigenous Peoples.
For Indigenous Peoples, climate instability, biodiversity loss, and land degradation are interconnected manifestations of a broader imbalance in the relationship between people and the earth. This understanding was articulated by Indigenous leaders during UNCED and reflected in the Kari-Oca Declaration. However, the institutional architecture that emerged from Rio divided this reality into separate thematic and governance tracks, resulting in parallel systems of negotiation, reporting, financing, and implementation.
