A/HRC/61/49 I. Introduction 1. Nature conservation is essential for continuing collective existence and has rightfully risen on international and domestic policy agendas. Unfortunately, economic, political and geopolitical considerations, together with a lack of necessary change in mindsets regarding the need for action, have constituted enormous obstacles to environmental protection. Every global target set on international agendas has been missed. 2. Nature conservation is often carried out either with no consideration for cultural rights or, worse, at the expense of cultural rights, and in disregard of cultural diversity. In some instances, nature conservation is used as a facade for changes aimed at increasing tourism or imposing prevailing cultures. Conservation projects have been weaponized to dispossess groups of their lands, territories and resources and disconnect them from their cultural sites, ways of life and land- and water-based cultural practices. The urgency of safeguarding and fostering biodiversity and climate mitigation provides cover for States and other conservation actors to infringe on cultural rights with relative impunity, in furtherance of a “greater environmental good”. John H. Knox has emphasized that the dominant conservation strategy has been to create national parks and other protected areas that prohibit almost all human activities. Humans are allowed to enter these fortresses of conservation only to experience the beauty of nature: “Those who live in these areas already, no matter how ancient or profound their cultural and material ties, must leave.” 1 3. Populations are presented with the following pseudo-dilemma: they must either preserve and protect the environment through nature conservation that requires abandoning and losing cultural elements, or fail to stop the further degradation of nature. In the present report, it is emphasized that nature and culture are inextricably intertwined. 2 Protecting one cannot take place without protecting the other. Nature provides the settings in which cultural meanings, knowledge and ways of life develop and flourish. Similarly, cultural understandings and practices shape interactions with natural resources and are critical to biodiversity management. 4. This pseudo-dilemma also makes people believe that nature conservation largely relies on specific categories of the population, often from among the most vulnerable, who are required to discontinue specific cultural practices and relocate from certain areas. This is done without questioning the wider issues at stake, including the cultural practices of more dominant groups. In any case, dominant cultural groups tend to regard practices that are carried out outside their own communities as trivial or backwards and to ignore them. 5. Utilitarian approaches in which nature is at the service of human development lead to extractivism and predation, even though such outcomes have been found to be harmful to all. International law emphasizes that States must take into account the interdependence between communities and their natural and cultural ecosystems, respect the diversity of cultural practices and question without prejudice and bias whether practices promote or jeopardize human dignity and the sustainability of these ecosystems. It is emphasized in the present report that a cultural rights-based approach, anchored in the principles of non-discrimination, equality and justice, offers important safeguards. 6. In preparation for the present report, a questionnaire was sent to States and other stakeholders, to gather experiences and identify challenges and promising practices that 1 2 2 John H. Knox, “Dismantling the fortress: reforming international conservation”, Harvard Environmental Law Review, vol. 49, No. 1 (2025), p. 4. See submissions from Afghanistan (regarding Nowruz); Colombia, p. 2; and Paraguay (regarding the Guarani concept of tekoha); and submissions from Amnesty International (regarding the Innu of Quebec, Canada), International Council on Monuments and Sites (regarding the Shinto religion) and Dolly Wong (regarding Indonesian philosophy). The submissions are available at www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2025/call-contributions-nature-conservation-and-cultural-rights. See also Juliana Merçon and others, “From local landscapes to international policy: contributions of the biocultural paradigm to global sustainability”, Global Sustainability, vol. 2 (2019). GE.26-01310