At the 2026 U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Armenia (COP17), Indigenous peoples and local communities strengthened their role in the decision-making of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), with the full operationalization of a subsidiary body within the treaty. The Subsidiary body on Article 8(j) (SB8J) was historically created at the 2024 biodiversity summit in Colombia. It allows Indigenous peoples and local communities (IP&LCs) to advise parties, draft decision texts and handle tasks assigned to them, such as developing guidelines for the implementation of global conservation goals with the full participation of IP&LCs. “We celebrate this historic adoption,” said Jennifer Corpuz, a negotiator for the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), during the closing session. “With this decision, we strengthen the inclusivity of SB8J, which further enables rights-based implementation of the CBD.” While the subsidiary body was created in 2024, delegates at COP17 discussed what its full operationalization would mean, such as specifying its function, governance structure, budget, and when it would have meetings. One of the biggest sticking points throughout the two weeks of discussions, revolved around who gets to represent IP&LCs in the body and how that representation must be organized. This included the composition of the co-chairs and friends of the Bureau. One disagreement during the meetings was whether the representatives of the subsidiary body should be from among the five U.N. regional groups (which are groupings of countries) or from the seven sociocultural regions (which capture the diversity of Indigenous peoples like the Sámi, Inuit and many…This article was originally published on Mongabay
