The World Conservation Congress 2025 offers the international conservation community an opportunity to reflect, learn, and recommit to foundational human rights principles in the face of escalating global pressures on nature, livelihoods, and climate change.
The Conservation Initiative on Human Rights (CIHR), founded in 2009, is a consortium of international conservation NGOs working to ensure that human rights are integrated into conservation practice and policy. Since its establishment, CIHR members have come together not only to advance shared commitments, but also to share their experiences in implementing human rights principles across their work — learning from both successes and challenges. Through this collaboration, CIHR has built a unique platform for exchange, mutual accountability, and joint leadership in rights-based conservation.
This paper highlights significant initiatives by CIHR members that:
Advance awareness and understanding of rights-based approaches in conservation;
Strengthen practice and tools for addressing and mitigating human rights risks in evolving conservation paradigms;
Improve mechanisms for reporting, information-sharing, and accountability; and
Foster trust between conservation organizations, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities.
The document reviews achievements and progress to date, identifies lessons learned, and sets out future directions to guide our work — and hopefully the work of other conservation organizations — in embedding human rights, accountability, and trust at the heart of global conservation efforts.
