Webinar for International Day for Biodiversity – Biodiversity is Life: Rights of Nature vs Financialisation of Nature

Biodiversity is Life. Biodiversity weaves the web of life. It is not corporate property. It is not a financial asset or commodity of corporations whose greed drives the mass extinction of species and biodiversity loss.

In the name of biodiversity “conservation” and “protection”, the financial sector is increasingly making calls for a new form of bio-imperialism through the false solution of financializing nature and biodiversity through a number of market mechanisms like biodiversity credits, and Nature Asset companies (NACs). These are the financial sector’s attempts to commodify whole ecosystems, in territories where there is the greatest biodiversity, the territories of indigenous peoples. As noted by the Green Finance Observatory: “biodiversity credits derive their political appeal only from their ability to delay meaningful action to curb destruction in rich industrialized countries.” The attempts at commodifying life, through the financialization of biodiversity and ecosystems, really just represent the continuation of corporate interest to commodify life.

What we must recognise is that biodiversity, far from being an asset or a commodity, is a continuum. In resistance to the extractive worldview of the financial sector stands the worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness, interrelatedness, and interdependence of all facets of Creation and Life. Mother Earth is sentient and not isolated from the whole. All nature and biodiversity has a fundamental right to be.

The health of all ecosystems is determined by Biodiversity. Biodiversity is diversity in life. Earth-based knowledge systems, in the hands of women and indigenous people, who now take care of 80% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity, recognize that cultivation of biodiversity lies in living in harmony with nature and honoring the complex web of relationships in nature, not in its further commodification.

It is this relational paradigm that has gifted the biodiversity of soils, and the interrelationships of plants and animals, and that over millennia co-evolved into diverse cultures and knowledge systems based on health, resilience and care for the land. Nature’s rights and people’s rights are inseparable and fundamental to the health and the well-being of both humanity and the Earth.

Also see:

Biodiversity, Financialization of Nature and Biodiversity Credits

The Convention on Biological Diversity must resist the commodification of all life

Is the Kunming-Montreal Global biodiversity framework enough to protect biodiversity?

BIODIVERSITY IS LIFE – illustrated booklet

Biodiversity is Life – Graphic Novel

Bio-imperialism vs. Bio-diversity

Resisting GMO Imperialism – Events in Mexico – March 2024

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The Attempted Destruction of Biodiversity-based Cultures

Safeguarding Biodiversity for the Regeneration of the Land

Making Peace with the Earth – Through Diversity, Mutuality, Non-Violence & Care – An Ecofeminist Manifesto