In a room packed with Indigenous delegates in Cali, Colombia, applause broke out when governments adopted a new body on biodiversity in 2024. Two years later, Lucy Mulenkei is among those in Yerevan, Armenia, working to turn that decision into a body that can do its job.
At the United Nations biodiversity conference COP17, Indigenous representatives are discussing the operations and governance of the Subsidiary Body on Article 8(j), part of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The body is intended to give Indigenous peoples and local communities a stronger role in decisions at future biodiversity conferences. Its work is tied to putting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the world’s 2030 nature plan, into action.
The decision to create the body came at COP16 in Cali, after years of negotiations. Now delegates must settle practical questions, including how it will function day to day, how to choose co-chairs, how to move forward with 12 tasks in its work program and how its work will be funded. Those talks are not finished. Some parties oppose the body, and delegates still need to agree on its way of working. COP17 is due to conclude on Oct. 30, 2026.
Mulenkei brings both community ties and years of environmental work to the discussions. A Maasai leader from Kenya, she co-chairs the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity and leads the Indigenous Information Network. She grew up in a traditional village and began working on Indigenous rights because she saw that her communities lacked a voice and faced long-standing marginalization. Before becoming an activist, she spent 17 years reporting on environmental issues in East Africa as a broadcast journalist.
She also attended the first meeting of the new body, held in Panama in October 2025. Speaking during the first week of COP17, she described the direct link between Indigenous communities and the natural places they care for: “We are linked with biodiversity because we are the ones protecting our resources where we are on the ground.”
The body matters because global promises depend on action in places where people live and work. Governments can set targets and rules, Mulenkei has said, but the effort to protect nature unfolds across farms, forests, fisheries, businesses, cities and communities. She argues that the 2030 goals cannot be reached without genuine partnerships, meaningful inclusion and recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights.
For Mulenkei, this is also about making traditional knowledge and community leadership part of conservation decisions, rather than treating Indigenous people as observers. She has welcomed growing recognition of their role in protecting and restoring biodiversity, while stressing that commitments from governments, businesses and civil society still need to be carried out.
The next step in Yerevan is less dramatic than the cheers in Cali: agreeing on rules, leadership and funding. But those details will shape whether the new body can provide a lasting place for Indigenous peoples and local communities in biodiversity decisions. Mulenkei is optimistic that COP17 can end positively, even as important disagreements remain.