A Critique of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the European Union’s NaturAfrica "Green Deal"

• In Event: Green Criminology VI: International and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Activists and scholars from the Global South have raised significant concerns that the "protection" of biodiversity in conservation areas— now outlined as thirty percent of the planet by 2030, known as "30x30"—constitutes a new conduit for primitive accumulation and land grabbing on a spectacular scale. In this paper, through a review of relevant literature, website content, and media, I consider the basis and substance of these concerns and explore the implicit assumptions that underlie the 30x30 Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and implications of its implementation. Through the lens of green criminology and political ecology, I specifically focus on the European Commission’s NaturAfrica "Green Deal" initiative to supporting biodiversity conservation in the African continent whose living organisms comprise an estimated one quarter of all global biodiversity including the earth’s largest intact assemblages of large mammals. I consider the financialization of nature and the securitization and militarization of nature conservation championed by corporatized conservation NGOs based in the Global North and ask what already explicit alternatives exist.

Author

• Laura Bedford, University of Melbourne