Indigenous Leadership and the Need for Synergy Across the Rio Conventions
A Call for Integrated Action on Climate, Biodiversity, and Land Crises
More than three decades after the Rio Earth Summit, Indigenous Peoples continue to raise a critical question to the international community: why are environmental crises still being addressed in isolation when they are experienced together in the real world?
In her keynote address at the First Global Technical Workshop on Synergies Between the Three Rio Conventions, Minnie Degawan, FSC-IF’s managing director, reflected on the origins of Indigenous Peoples’ engagement in global environmental negotiations and offered a powerful call for a more integrated and rights-based approach to solving today’s ecological crises.
Looking back to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Minnie recalled how Indigenous Peoples from across the world came together not as passive observers, but as partners seeking solutions to the environmental destruction already affecting their communities.
“We lived the very real loss of water, or too much water, the longer, harsher storms, the ever-increasing number of months when we would not have enough food,” she said.
She described how Indigenous communities witnessed the disappearance of fish stocks, medicinal plants, forest species, and traditional materials used by women for weaving and cultural practices. These changes were not understood as separate environmental problems, but as interconnected impacts affecting territories, livelihoods, culture, and identity all at once.
“At that time, we looked at the issue through our Indigenous worldview, which views nature as one interconnected whole,” Minnie emphasized. “We did not divide these issues into climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.”
Yet despite the urgency expressed during the Rio Earth Summit, the global response that followed created separate conventions for climate change, biodiversity, and desertification. While these frameworks have advanced important international cooperation, Minnie argued that they also reinforced fragmentation in environmental governance.
“One reason why we are not advancing is because of the false division that exists,” she noted. “The impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation are occurring simultaneously in the same spaces.”
Her remarks highlighted a growing concern shared by many Indigenous leaders and environmental advocates: fragmented approaches often lead to fragmented solutions. When policies, funding, and implementation are disconnected, efforts to solve one environmental challenge can unintentionally worsen another. Minnie warned that competition for resources between conventions has also created “false rivalries,” particularly at a time when global economic pressures are reducing funding available for environmental action.
For Indigenous Peoples, however, the issue is not only about institutional coordination. It is also fundamentally about rights.
Minnie stressed that Indigenous Peoples’ rights to lands, territories, and resources are inseparable from their ability to protect ecosystems and contribute solutions to global environmental challenges. She pointed to the importance of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), emphasizing that when Indigenous rights are fully respected, communities are better positioned to safeguard territories from destructive extraction and unsustainable development.
“Recognizing and promoting our rights is the foundation for solutions to the issues we face,” she stated.
She also addressed the growing recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems within the three Rio Conventions. While acknowledging important progress, including the establishment of spaces such as the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform under the UNFCCC and the Indigenous Caucus within the UNCCD, Minnie cautioned that participation alone is not enough.
“At times, increasingly procedural and technical spaces risk distancing us from the values, worldviews, and ways of relating that we originally brought into these forums,” she observed.
Despite greater visibility in international negotiations, Indigenous Peoples still face significant barriers to influencing decision-making and accessing direct resources for self-determined action. Minnie pointed to the lack of adequate resource allocation as a major limitation that continues to undermine Indigenous stewardship efforts on the ground.
Her keynote ultimately called for a deeper transformation in how environmental governance is structured. Rather than limiting collaboration to occasional exchanges between conventions, she advocated for genuine synergies through joint programming, joint reporting systems, and coordinated resource mobilization.
“The call is not just for greater synergies between the Rio Conventions,” she said. “Real synergy must happen not through token exchanges between conventions, but through joint programming, joint reporting platforms, and even joint resource mobilization.”
At the heart of Minnie’s reflections was a powerful reminder that Indigenous Peoples have long carried knowledge systems rooted in interconnectedness and reciprocity with nature. Her analysis challenges prevailing approaches to environmental governance by arguing that Indigenous leadership is not supplementary to global solutions, but fundamental to them.
As governments and institutions search for pathways to address escalating environmental crises, her perspective offers a compelling call to move beyond fragmented systems toward more holistic, rights-based, and integrated approaches grounded in Indigenous worldviews.
“Nature is one,” she concluded, “and the solution is not to fragment the problems and solutions, but to have the courage and vision that our ancestors had, that of viewing nature not just as one, but more importantly, as part of us.”
