by Emily Mutota (socio-ecologist and researcher) & Mariam Mayet (African Centre for Biodiversity)
The CBD’s first global review should be the COP17’s reckoning moment. It must ask not whether governments have updated plans, announced finance, or placed more hectares on a map, but whether implementation restores biodiversity while strengthening the rights and authority of those sustaining living landscapes. Otherwise, the review risks becoming an exercise in global greenwashing.
This is the central warning of the African Centre for Biodiversity’s new study "Biodiversity, land, and power: 30x30, communal livestock systems, and food sovereignty in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana."
It finds that biodiversity governance is moving into communal and productive landscapes, while policy alignment is advancing faster than community decision-making power and accountability. For COP17, the critical test is therefore not whether communities are recognised or consulted, but whether they can shape, refuse, or renegotiate decisions affecting their land, resources, and livelihoods.
This makes 30x30 a struggle over land and power, not simply an area target. Protected areas, prospective other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), stewardship sites, and community-managed landscapes are not interchangeable hectares. Recognition does not secure tenure, protect grazing and water access, or confer binding community authority. People may remain on their land yet lose control over the resources sustaining them: displacement by function if not by fence.
The global review must reject the fiction that designation equals delivery. Parties should report ecological effectiveness, connectivity,
and representativeness separately from governance quality. They must identify rights-holders; customary and seasonal uses; decision-makers; and effects on grazing, cultivation, fishing, harvesting, water, and cultural places. 30x30 must not turn communal lands into conservation assets while landholders remain powerless. No hectare should count where rights-holders cannot say yes, say no, renegotiate, control benefits, and seek remedy.
Implementation activity is not proof of success. An independently evaluated Namibian rangeland programme reached 58 communities yet delivered no significant gains in cattle productivity, household income, or nutrition, while four of 10 ecological indicators worsened. COP17’s global review must therefore measure verified outcomes, not participation or spending alone.
Biodiversity finance is a new frontier of control over land, nature, and livelihoods. Blended finance, offsets, and biodiversity credits can empower investors through contracts, data, and long-term land-use restrictions without changing ownership. Offsets license destruction here against uncertain gains elsewhere. COP17 must prevent market finance from displacing binding public finance or opening communal lands to accumulation. The report’s forward-looking warning is that finance and conservation obligations are expanding faster than the safeguards needed to govern them.
COP17 should therefore require Parties to show who holds decision-making authority, who can renegotiate or exit harmful arrangements, how benefits and risks reach households, and what remedy is available when ecological or livelihood outcomes deteriorate - before implementation is scaled up. This would turn the global review into an early-warning and course-correction mechanism rather than a retrospective record of promises.
COP17 must change the measure of progress: targets versus implementation; hectares versus verified biodiversity gains; pledged finance versus funds received; participation versus decision-making authority; and grievances versus remedies. Every commitment should be traceable through a respon-sible institution, disbursed budget, site-level action, affected rights-holders, independently verified ecological and social outcomes, and remedy.
The choice is stark. The global review can secure tenure, protect productive access, and strengthen community authority. Or it can legitimise new conservation and financial obligations while power remains concentrated in states, agencies, donors, and investors. 30x30 will command legiti-macy only if it protects biodiversity with justice - not at the expense of those already caring for the land.
Download the report “Biodiversity, land, and power”