The Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples and Conservation came out of an international meeting of social and natural scientists and NGOs held in Wadi Dana Nature Reserve in Jordan in 2002. It forged partnership between conservationists and mobile peoples in order to ensure that future conservation policies and programmes help maintain the earth's ecosystems, species and genetic diversity while respecting the rights and recognising the interests of mobile peoples. This term refers to indigenous and traditional communities whose livelihoods depend on common-property natural resources, using mobility as a management strategy and an element of cultural identity.
The Dana Declaration was endorsed by representatives of mobile peoples attending the IUCN World Parks Congress in Durban 2003, where Recommendation 5.27 Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Conservation was adopted and the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP) was created.
At the 4th World Conservation Congress organised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Barcelona in 2008, the Dana Declaration was endorsed as part of the working principles for social development in the IUCN.
In 2012, the Dana Declaration Standing Committee and WAMIP held the Dana+10 workshop in Jordan. They developed a statement for the Rio+20 meetings in 2012 to promote the human rights of mobile indigenous people in the context of biodiversity conservation and democratic environmental governance in the face of continuing expansion of protected areas and land dispossession.
For the 20th anniversary of the Dana Declaration, the Dana+20 workshop in Jordan in September 2022 took stock of ecological, technical and political developments over the past two decades and brought the implications for mobile peoples to the attention of global fora through the Dana+20 Manifesto on Mobile Peoples. It outlined ways forward in consultation with mobile peoples to improve engagement on the interrelated priorities of conservation, climate adaptation/resilience, habitat loss and sustainable development. The workshop included a component on how mobile peoples’ advocates can raise awareness about the IYRP within their communities and bring the workshop findings to the attention of other IYRP stakeholders. The Dana+20 workshop report can be found below under Documents. The Dana Declaration is available in English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Indonesian, Mongolian and Farsi.
Many of the demands were taken up in the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples issued in July 2024 (see under Documents below).
