Press Release: Peoples' Conservation Summit 2026: Road to COP-17 CBD, Armenia "Striving for Conservation, Fighting Marginalization"

Conservation is not new to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Forests, rivers, food spaces, and living areas have been managed through rules, traditions, knowledge, and practices rooted in the community's philosophy of life and passed down from generation to generation. These various practices show that conservation has long been alive and practiced by the community.

However, these practices often occur amid threats of shrinking living spaces and marginalization. Community living areas must face the establishment of conservation areas, granting of concessions, and various policies that limit their management practices. The impact is not only a reduction in space. The community's ecological and spiritual ties to their area, including knowledge, leadership, food systems, and the position of women and young generations, are also threatened.

These issues emerged in four People's Conservation Panels at the Peoples' Conservation Summit (PCS) 2026, which discussed management and protection systems of living areas; community leadership in managing and monitoring areas; women and young generations in conservation; and the politics of managing community food spaces.

The four panels revealed a contradiction. Communities already have management systems, customary laws, knowledge, monitoring mechanisms, and cross-generational food systems. However, these practices still face governance that restricts space, reduces authority, ignores knowledge, and in some cases, even criminalizes communities. Amid this situation, communities do not stop protecting their areas. They continue to strive for conservation while fighting various forms of marginalization that threaten the sustainability of these practices.

In the Panel "Management and Protection Systems of Living Areas: ICCAs, Spatial Planning, and Community-Based Restoration", participants showed that various communities already have their own rules and mechanisms for protecting and utilizing resources in their areas. Griven Putra shared how communities manage rivers through customary law. Fish utilization is allowed traditionally, while tree cutting along the river, using poison, and electrofishing are prohibited. Some of the management results are also used to help divorced women, mosque operations, and social needs of the community. "Before this country was established, we already had a system to manage our lives in this way. We continue to do this to this day," said Griven.

This experience shows a fundamental difference. The state tends to use land control and administration mechanisms through area designation, registration, partnerships, or management permits. Meanwhile, community legitimacy arises from historical ties, customary law, spiritual connections, and cross-generational management practices. When recognition policies stop at registration or partnerships without adequate authority distribution in decision-making, communities remain in a vulnerable position.

The Panel "Community Leadership in Managing and Monitoring Customary and Community Managed Areas (community-led monitoring)" showed that the capacity to protect and monitor areas also exists at the community level. Practices such as ronda leuweung (community-based forest patrols), village-based conservation, and endemic species protection show that communities have their own knowledge and mechanisms to understand changes occurring in their areas.

Azir, for example, shared efforts to protect the maleo bird, which grew from community concern for the sustainability of the Lore Lindu Biosphere Reserve. This practice shows that communities are not merely executors of conservation programs but have the initiative, knowledge, and concern to protect species and their areas.

The sustainability of leadership from these various stories also depends on the regeneration of knowledge. Noer Fauzi emphasized that customary knowledge is not just stored as information but is practiced through ceremonies related to the surrounding nature, water, food, air, soil, and other life elements. "This knowledge is practiced through customary ceremonies, with mediums like water, food, air, and soil. Twenty years from now, we could lose customary leaders and managers capable of conducting various customary ceremonies. In Indigenous communities, those who understand customs the most are those who master these various ceremonies," said Noer Fauzi.

Maintaining cross-generational knowledge is part of the community's efforts to ensure conservation sustainability.

Meanwhile, in the Panel "Women, Young Generations, and Conservation", Mia Siscawati showed that women's contributions to resource management are often unrecognized because their work is attached to domestic roles. "If a farmer, women are not considered farmers, but as farmers' wives. The same goes for fishermen. Women actually also go to sea, but by noon they have to return because they have to cook. If we didn't have to cook, we would dare to go to the deep sea. So, cultural dimensions marginalize women," said Mia.

This marginalization not only occurs in the recognition of women's work but also in their space to engage in organizations and decision-making. In her experience in Gunung Halimun, Lebak, Banten, women who want to attend community meetings may face stigma, gossip, and even violence, which then also limits other women's involvement in public spaces. "Women's contributions are extraordinary, but the cultural and structural barriers they face are also significant," emphasized Mia.

However, women and young generations are not only in impacted positions. They are involved in natural resource management, knowledge inheritance, mapping, advocacy, and the struggle to defend territories. Strengthening their positions means recognizing them as knowledge holders, leaders, and decision-makers in determining the future of their communities and living areas.

Resistance to marginalization is also evident in the management of food spaces. In the Panel "Politics of Managing Community Food Spaces", shifting cultivation systems, fishermen's catch areas, and communal spaces are increasingly facing shrinking areas, extractive concessions, area claims, and recognition rights bureaucracy.

In some communities, the narrowing of areas makes the shifting cultivation cycle shorter and threatens the rites and knowledge connected to the system. Similar concerns arise in the Meratus National Park plan when Indigenous Peoples' fields are included in areas planned to become national park zones.

In this context, food should not be reduced to merely discussing what is produced and consumed. Food systems connect the human body with nature, knowledge, culture, and social relations formed over generations. Food standardization through state policies also risks accelerating the detachment of communities from food sources and management systems they know.

Amid these various pressures, communities continue to build strategies to defend their spaces and livelihoods. The Berkah Alam Sejahtera Cooperative, for example, was developed to create added value while opening economic and social opportunities for groups of fisherwomen. This strategy shows that defending food spaces also means maintaining the community's ability to manage natural products and determine the form of livelihood they want to build.

The four People's Conservation Panels show that marginalization operates on many layers, including cultural and structural dimensions, through authority restrictions, ignoring their local knowledge, and minimal recognition of women's and young generations' contributions. At the same time, they must face concessions, area claims, and food standardization.

These various experiences show that communities do not stop as impacted groups. They continue to protect and manage areas through customary law, community patrols, species protection, knowledge inheritance, food management, and building economic strategies to sustain community life. Striving for conservation, in many of these experiences, also means fighting various forms of marginalization that threaten space, knowledge, authority, and the sustainability of community life.

Thus, people's conservation is not enough to only gain recognition for its practices. It requires protection of living spaces, recognition of community knowledge and leadership, and authority distribution that allows them to determine how their areas are protected and managed. Without it, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities will continue to be forced to strive for conservation from a marginalized position while continuously fighting marginalization that threatens the conservation practices themselves.