The global biodiversity crisis is grounded in a lack of equitable governance. Approximately one million species now face extinction, and global wildlife populations have declined by 73% since 1970. Indigenous Peoples (IP) and local communities (LC) are most capable of halting and reversing this crisis; they govern territories covering an estimated 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, yet fewer than 10% of those territories are legally recognized under national law. Without tenure rights, these communities are dispossessed by extractive investment, agribusiness expansion, and conservation and carbon removal programs. Women bear this crisis disproportionately, facing heightened exposure when ecosystems are degraded or land is seized due to their roles as food producers and natural resource stewards. This policy proposes that governments formally recognize gender-equitable land tenure for all legitimate land right holders and integrate this recognition into national climate, land restoration, and biodiversity strategies. It calls for rights of nature frameworks to complement land tenure, designed by and accountable to the communities who steward ecosystems. These interventions have already proven effective. Ethiopia’s gender-equitable land certification program has demonstrated measurable biodiversity co-benefits through increased tree planting and soil conservation. Indigenous communities across six countries in the Bay of Bengal have protected 4.6 million hectares of ecologically critical mangrove forest through certification. New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua Act granted the Whanganui River legal personhood through co-governance with Māori communities. This proposal seeks to ensure conservation fundamentally prioritizes communities’ rights and governance standing as ecosystem stewards. It redistributes legal authority over land and ecosystems from transnational capital (via investment treaties, agribusiness concessions, and carbon markets) to communities as a rights-based foundation for biodiversity protection. It also seeks to reduce extractive ecological pressures and enables governments to fulfill human rights beyond growth, including through equitable land taxation revenues.
