12 November 2026

From Recognition to Action: Afro-descendant Peoples Set Their Sights on 2027

 

Reflections from the CITAFRO webinar assessing COP17 on Biodiversity and the road to COP31 on Climate — where the struggle shifts from winning words on paper to making them real in the territories.

Something remarkable happened at a recent online convening, promoted by Coalición Internacional de Territorios y Pueblos Afrodescendientes de América Latina y el Caribe (the International Coalition of Territories and Afro-descendant Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean – CITAFRO), and supported by TINTA: government negotiators, United Nations officials, and leaders of Afro-descendant Peoples took candid stock of where the fight for the rights of Afro-descendant Peoples stands. The verdict was unanimous: historic progress has been made, but the hardest work is only beginning.

The anchor achievement remains Decision 16/6, adopted at the COP16 in Cali, which for the first time recognised Afro-descendant Peoples as collective subjects of rights within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). As the moderator of the webinar, Darwin Torres of CITAFRO, framed it, this milestone was “product of a joint effort between civil society and the State — the art of democracy.” Speaking for Brazil’s Ministry of Racial Equality and a member of the negotiating team, Fabiano Campelo Bechelany showed what that looks like in practice: an entire government institution, born from Brazil’s own struggles for racial equality, carrying the Afro-descendant agenda deliberately and trying to fight against environmental racism.

Two years later, the CBD COP17 just took place in Yerevan, Armenia, from the 19th to the 30th of November of 2026. A few days later, during the CITAFRO webinar, Q’apaj Conde Choque, of the CBD Secretariat, walked participants through the results that matter most for Afro-descendant Peoples. 

Three stood out. First, a decision on resource mobilisation with simplified funding mechanisms and specific windows enabling direct access for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples — one that asks the right questions: who decides priorities, and how much money actually reaches the territories? Second, the modus operandi of the new permanent subsidiary body on Article 8(j): a State-led body that nonetheless guarantees real participation, through a co-presidency shared between governments and community representatives and a standing “group of friends.” Third, the Sevan voluntary guidelines, recognising that Indigenous and traditional territories can be complementary to protected areas — or recognised on their own terms — under Target 3.

Key Webinar Takeaways: Words Must Become Budgets, Indicators and Mandates

  1. Recognition is fragile — beware the “evaporation risk”. Laura Marrero, of Uruguay’s Ministry of Environment, offered the sharpest warning. Having watched the feminist movement’s decades-long fight for recognition in climate talks, she described what comes next: “Once recognition arrives, there comes the risk of evaporation… Things can remain in headlines, in preambles of decisions, but they must then pass to an operationalisation phase.” COP30 in Belém delivered Afro-descendant references across four agenda items — the Gender Plan, the Global Goal on Adaptation, Just Transition, and finance. Turning those words into budgets, indicators, and mandates is now the test.
  2. Representation must grow. Miguel Pereira, of Uruguay’s Centro Cultural Pircayllus and CITAFRO, put a number on a structural imbalance: “It is not possible that the representation of Afro-descendant Peoples rests on the shoulders of four, five, or six people, while other groups have participation of hundreds.” Building a larger, trained, and funded bench of negotiators is a precondition for everything else. Thaynah Gutierrez, of Geledés – Instituto da Mulher Negra in Brazil, gave the exhaustion behind that number a voice: “Year after year, we are still facing the same obstacles — we have to explain over and over again who we are as Afro-descendants… We need to strengthen our contributions. For example, in Article 8(j), we need more space to give our opinion and contribute our traditional knowledge to help protect our biodiversity.”
  3. Advocacy must be professionalised — and permanent. Position papers are no longer enough. At a pivotal meeting with a group of countries, the question Pereira received was blunt: “What texts do you have? Which paragraphs do you want included?” — “We have to build expertise and much deeper professionalisation in drafting specific texts.” Zulema Burneo, of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), added that influence “must be sustained to the very last minute, because some Afro-descendant references were actually accepted in the closing plenary.” Crucially, the work happens year-round: as Torres put it, “it is not within the COP itself that things get organised.”
  4. Alliances make the difference. Speakers credited allied governments — Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Panama, Mexico — for standing with the agenda, and civil society organisations for sustained accompaniment that builds evidence, maps territories, and opens doors to delegations. There was also a shared sense that stronger dialogue between Afro-descendant and Indigenous organisations, built on mutual respect and distinct identities, would benefit both agendas.

The Opportunities of 2027

Making the case at COP31 in Antalya. Right now, in Turkey, CITAFRO — through its political spokespeople José Luis Rengifo of Colombia’s Proceso de Comunidades Negras — is carrying a six-point climate agenda: collective recognition under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), decision-making power over climate finance, protagonism for Afro-descendant women through the Lima Gender Work Programme, ancestral knowledge in the Global Goal on Adaptation, Just Transition built on real consultation, and participation in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The task: hold the gains won at COP30 in Belém through the operationalisation negotiations now unfolding in Antalya so that recognition in preambles survives contact with mechanisms, indicators, and budgets.

Intersessional work toward Ecuador. The subsidiary body on Article 8(j) continues its work toward COP18 — a biodiversity COP that will be held “in our home, in Latin America,” as José Absalón Suárez of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras celebrated. Open items include the composition of the “group of friends,” the next in-depth dialogue on conservation with a human-rights-based approach, and the voluntary glossary of terms, where Afro-descendant language stayed contested among some governments and donors at COP17. Each is a concrete door for structured Afro-descendant participation. 

Securing the finance gap. Suárez flagged a critical gap: the Cali Fund’s texts still speak only of “Indigenous Peoples and local communities,” without explicit Afro-descendant access. The intersessional period is the window to correct that before governance rules lock in.

National processes. Just Transition mechanism design, adaptation indicator expert groups, and the next round of NDCs and National Adaptation Plan reviews all run through capitals, not conference halls. As Marrero insisted, national commitments are where recognition becomes measurable, or invisible.

The closing words captured what the whole discussion was about: “There is no possibility of confronting climate change and caring for the planet without climate justice and without racial justice — and neither is possible without the recognition of Afro-descendant Peoples as subjects of rights.”

The road ahead runs fast: the UNFCCC COP32 in Ethiopia next year — a poignantly symbolic stage for the African diaspora’s climate agenda — then CBD COP18 in Ecuador in 2028. Whatever lands in those decisions will be drafted long before the gavels fall. The foundations are laid; 2027 is the year to build on them.