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Why get involved
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Below are five reasons why we need to say 'no' to WWF's New Deal for Nature, also marketed as Nature Positive.
1. Conceived of by vested interests
Behind the call for a New Deal for Nature—recently rebranded Nature Positive, also referred to as a Global Deal for Nature, a Global Goal for Nature, or a Paris Agreement for nature—lie the world’s most powerful capitalist interests, behavioural change organisations such as Avaaz, and big conservation NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) who partner with the world's biggest polluters. Human rights violators WWF lead the charge for this deal, which essentially consists of a huge neocolonial land grab from the most self-sufficient peoples on the planet, principally in Africa and Asia.
2. Harms those least responsible for destroying biodiversity
The New Deal for Nature would threaten the further displacement and genocide of Indigenous and tribal peoples as global corporations and the conservation industry seek control of their lands via the doubling of Protected Areas (30x30) to maintain and expand their hegemony under the guise of tackling climate change and protecting "nature". This represents a new wave of colonisation for peoples in the Global South, specifically for those in Africa and Asia where colonial or fortress conservation remains the dominant model of conservation.
3. Expands the very system destroying biodiversity
The New Deal for Nature would entail creating new markets worth some $10 trillion of global GDP growth, thereby expanding an economic system whose activities have been the main driver of biodiversity loss.
4. Fails to address the main drivers of biodiversity loss
Under the guise of acting on the climate and ecological crises, what the New Deal for Nature also entails is a new phase of financialisation and privatisation of nature (defined as "nature-based solutions" or "natural climate solutions", "natural capital" or "ecosystem services"). Yet these market-based solutions fail to address the main drivers of biodiversity loss, namely overconsumption by the Global North and an economic system based on the exploitation of people and planet that seeks to create new markets for consumer goods, destroying self-sufficiency in the process.
5. Undemocratic
The New Deal for Nature is being negotiated without any participation from the wider public. It was originally foreseen to be concluded as part of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 15) conference to be held in China in October 2020 (postponed on five occasions and now scheduled to take place in Montreal, in December 2022)—without any vote by our local, regional or national parliaments, bypassing full democratic scrutiny.
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