My cookie preferencesIndigenous Rights under the Convention on Biological Diversity: Reinforcing and Expanding Human Rights Law
Cittadino F
Project: 5a/2026 Environmental policy and law in multilevel systems
This chapter shows that the CBD regime contains provisions on benefit-sharing, consent-like rights, and the recognition of indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs) that help implementing Indigenous rights to land, natural resources, cultural rights, FPIC, and self-determination, and complement protection thereof in the context of biodiversity protection. This contribution also argues that the CBD regime gives rise to four new categories of collective rights of Indigenous Peoples that are not (fully) protected under IHRL: the right to benefit-sharing, the right to genetic resources, the right to traditional knowledge (TK), and biocultural rights. These rights bear a good potential for additional protection of collective rights because they apply to situations that would otherwise not be covered under IHRL, illustrative being the entitlement to genetic resources. In terms of the theoretical contribution of these rights, this chapter demonstrates that the CBD legal framework contributes to reinforcing legal pluralism, by assessing Indigenous Peoples’ entitlements to TK and, indirectly, to genetic resources in light of Indigenous customs, practices, and procedures. The chapter concludes that Indigenous Peoples’ rights protected under the CBD framework do not perfectly coincide with the categories of environmental rights due to their main object and substantive nature.
DOI: 10.1017/9781009647021.004