Human-rights based approaches to conservation: Lessons learned from safeguarding implementation and launch of new web-based assessment tool

Hosts: Legacy Landscapes Fund, DLA Piper

Co-Hosts: Iepé, Imazon, ZGF, Wildlife Conservation Society

Date/Time: October 31, 3:30 - 4:30pm COT

Location:  IUCN Nature Positive Pavilion – Small Room & Livestream

Moderator: 

• Paul Roughan, Pacific Strategy Lead at Nia Tero

Panelists:

• Dr. Ilka Herbinger, Deputy Director / Environmental & Social Safeguards Director at Legacy Landscapes Fund
• Jakeline Pereira, Director of the Protected Areas Program at Imazon
• Mathew Linkie, Wildlife Conservation Society Andes, Amazon, Orinoco (AAO) Technical Director
• Esperanza Leal Gómez, Frankfurt Zoological Society Colombia Country Director
• Hauke Hoops, Frankfurt Zoological Society Peru Country Director
• Shirley Magniez-Pouget, DLA Piper Avocate à la Cour/ Legal Director

Event Focus:

Conservation interventions can have adverse human rights impacts affecting a wide range of stakeholders.These can include Indigenous Peoples and local communities, whose access to their land and natural resources may be restricted. Conservation efforts can also affect rangers, who may be forced to operate under more difficult working conditions. To help address these issues, funding and implementing actors in the conservation sector have increasingly advanced environmental and social safeguarding, including human-rights based approaches in their operations.

LLF is a dedicated funding instrument for area-based conservation. LLF’s safeguards system is a recognition of the inherent risks and impacts that conservation has on society, people and ecosystems. The thoroughly devised Environmental and Social Safeguards System (ESMS) demonstrates LLF’s commitment to implementing safeguards that identify, avoid and mitigate these risks and impacts. Following an introduction of LLF’s ESMS, implementing partner organizations of LLF will showcase examples of safeguards implementation and the opportunities and challenges that come with it.

DLA Piper, one of the world’s leading law firms, has been engaging with the conservation sector since several years and has been engaged in developing a web-based human rights due diligence tool and platform. The tool will support members of the global conservation community in identifying and mitigating human rights risks in their conservation programs. The tool aims to foster a rights-respecting culture in conservation globally, and advance industry standards on human rights due diligence. It will contain resources and practical tools to raise awareness of minimum international standards relating to human rights, as well as tools to help stakeholders identify and mitigate human rights risks in their conservation programs. The tool will also combine legal technology with data analytics and artificial intelligence. The platform will be targeted at those responsible for creating and delivering conservation programs, such as not-for-profit organizations and rangers, as well as people directly affected by the programs including Indigenous Peoples and local communities.