The global biodiversity crisis is often framed as an environmental issue vanishing species, degraded ecosystems, and collapsing food webs. But this framing is incomplete.
Protecting biodiversity is not only about saving nature for its own sake; it is fundamentally about safeguarding human rights.
From the right to food and water, to health, culture, and even life itself, biodiversity underpins the conditions that make human dignity possible.
When ecosystems are destroyed, human rights are not merely threatened in theory they are violated in practice.
At its core, biodiversity refers to the variety of life on Earth: genes, species, and ecosystems.
This diversity sustains ecosystem services that humans depend on every day.
Forests regulate climate and water cycles, wetlands filter pollutants, oceans provide food and livelihoods, and soils rich in biological life enable agriculture.
When biodiversity declines, these life-support systems weaken, and the most vulnerable people are hit first and hardest. In this sense, biodiversity loss is not a neutral environmental outcome; it is a deeply political and ethical issue tied to inequality and justice.
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The right to food offers a clear example. More than three billion people rely on biodiversity-based livelihoods such as farming, fishing, herding, and foraging. Smallholder farmers depend on diverse crops and resilient ecosystems to cope with pests, diseases, and climate shocks.
Yet industrial agriculture, deforestation, and monocultures are eroding agrobiodiversity at an alarming rate.
As traditional crop varieties disappear, so does dietary diversity, increasing malnutrition and food insecurity.
When communities can no longer feed themselves because ecosystems have been degraded, the right to adequate food is directly undermined.
Water rights are similarly linked to biodiversity. Healthy watersheds, forests, and wetlands regulate water flow, prevent floods, recharge groundwater, and maintain water quality.
When forests are cleared or wetlands drained, communities downstream face water scarcity, contamination, and disaster risks.
In many parts of the world, including drought-prone regions of Africa, ecosystem degradation has intensified water stress, forcing women and children to walk longer distances for water or rely on unsafe sources.
Access to clean and sufficient water is a recognized human right, yet it cannot be realized without intact ecosystems.
Biodiversity loss also threatens the right to health. Nature is the foundation of modern and traditional medicine alike; a large share of pharmaceuticals are derived from plants, animals, and microorganisms.
As species go extinct, potential cures for diseases may vanish before they are even discovered.
Moreover, ecosystem disruption increases the risk of zoonotic diseases, as seen when deforestation and wildlife trade bring humans into closer contact with disease carrying species.
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed how environmental destruction can escalate into a global public health and human rights crisis, affecting lives, livelihoods, and freedoms worldwide.
For Indigenous Peoples and local communities, biodiversity is inseparable from cultural rights and identity.
Land, rivers, forests, and wildlife are not merely resources; they are sacred, relational, and central to ways of life passed down through generations.
When mining, logging, or conservation projects exclude or displace Indigenous communities, biodiversity may be harmed alongside cultural survival. Ironically, these communities are often the most effective stewards of biodiversity, yet they face land dispossession, criminalisation, and violence.
Protecting biodiversity therefore requires protecting the land rights, knowledge systems, and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples.
Climate change further tightens the link between biodiversity and human rights.
Ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, and oceans act as carbon sinks, buffering the impacts of climate change.
When they are destroyed, climate impacts intensify heatwaves, floods, droughts, and storms become more severe.
These impacts erode rights to housing, health, food, and security, particularly for the poor.
Climate justice and biodiversity protection are thus two sides of the same coin: both demand a rights-based approach that centres those least responsible for environmental harm but most affected by it.
Despite these realities, biodiversity protection is often pursued through narrow conservation models that exclude people, prioritizing fences over fairness.
Such approaches risk creating new human rights violations in the name of environmental protection.
A rights-based approach to biodiversity conservation insists that protecting nature and protecting people are not competing goals.
It emphasises participation, equity, accountability, and benefit-sharing.
Communities must be involved in decisions affecting their environments, and conservation must enhance, not restrict, their rights and livelihoods.
International law increasingly reflects this understanding.
The recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment by the United Nations is a landmark step.
However, recognition alone is not enough. Governments must translate this right into policies that halt deforestation, regulate extractive industries, protect environmental defenders, and invest in community-led conservation.
Corporations, too, have responsibilities: supply chains that drive habitat destruction and pollution must be reformed in line with human rights standards.
Ultimately, protecting biodiversity is about redefining progress. An economic model that values short-term profits over living systems inevitably sacrifices human rights along the way.
True development must be measured by the health of ecosystems and the well-being of people, especially the most marginalised.
When biodiversity thrives, ecosystems are resilient, food systems are diverse, cultures are sustained, and future generations inherit a liveable planet.
