Shanna Peoples missing 10 years: “We’re not going to stop until we bring this to a close”
GENEVA, Ala. (WTVY) - It’s one of Geneva County’s biggest mysteries, the disappearance of Shanna Peoples.
“We don’t know no more today than we did 10 years ago,” Elvis McKee, Shanna’s father says. “Just like she just disappeared off the face of the earth.”
A decade later and there is still no sign of her since she was last seen near her home on North Morris Street in the afternoon. She often rode her bike to a nearby store to purchase a soda and candy, but on that day that was not the case.
“If somebody is missing, there’s a reason, and in a case like this there is somebody responsible for it,” said Geneva Police Chief Pepper Mock.
Peoples disappearance leaves an eeriness throughout the city.
“It should bother everybody in this city because it could be somebody local,” Chief Mock said. “It’s probably somebody you see around town everyday, that’s responsible for it.”
This remains an open case and law enforcement is making it clear this case is not closed and will not be until peoples is found and an arrest is made. Investigators continue to work diligently on tips and leads to bring justice to her family, working with the FBI to try and bring closure to everyone involved.
“We want to find this young lady for the family for some type of closure, you know so they can go on with their lives because everybody is kind of in a moment of standstill,” Captain Michael McDuffie said.
10 years later and not a day goes by where Peoples family doesn’t miss their daughter.
“It’s just like a big ole empty place in your heart, just taken away from you and there is nothing that can fill it unless she comes home,” McKee said.
Investigators refuse to give up on Peoples case, they tell News 4 it is worked on each day.
“We’re not going to stop until we bring this to a close,” Capt. McDuffie said. “We’re going to find Shanna, we’re going to find out who did this.”
This year Peoples would be turning 30, she was 19 when she went missing.
“Just wish she would come home, somebody bring her home,” McKee said.
Investigators plead for anyone with any information, to please come forward. Captain McDuffie said it’s not too late, anything could help solve this case no mater how big or small.
DESCRIPTION OF PEOPLES:
Alias: Shanna McKee
Date(s) of Birth Used: November 22, 1991
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown Height: 6′0″
Weight: 120 pounds (At the time of her disappearance)
Sex: Female
Race: White
Scars and Marks: Shanna has a birthmark on the inside of her leg above her knee.
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Campaign launched to protect 80% of Amazon at key environment summit
Indigenous voices on the environment are finally being heard as Marseille hosts a global biodiversity summit, with a call to protect 80% of the Amazon, as well as a “counter conference” highlighting the conservation movement’s historic violation of people’s rights.
For the first time in its seven-decade history, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is including indigenous peoples as full voting members in their own right, rather than under the NGO category. Dozens of indigenous meetings are happening at the summit – which occurs every four years – with representatives from 23 organisations.
Greater inclusion of indigenous representatives comes as the European “fortress conservation” model, which resulted in vast human rights abuses and an estimated 20 million people displaced from their homelands worldwide since the 19th century, is increasingly being challenged.
Historically, the global conservation movement was based on the idea that protected areas flourish free from human disturbance, but a growing body of evidence shows that indigenous communities are the best at looking after wildlife, and that as much as 80% of the world’s remaining forest biodiversity lies within indigenous peoples’ territories.
‘We seek to build a new alliance with equal rights on equal terms,’ José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal told the IUCN congress in Marseille. Photograph: Arnold Jerocki/Getty
José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, a member of Venezuela’s Wakuenai Kurripaco people and coordinator of the Congress of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon River Basin (Coica), which represents more than 2 million indigenous people, said they had been fighting for decades to be heard.
“We come to the IUCN with our voice and voting rights. We seek to build a new alliance with equal rights on equal terms, but we see that there is still much to do, so much to recognise,” he said.
“Less than 1% of all the funding that is invested in protecting intact biodiversity and mitigating climate change in our territories reaches our communities, and that has to change. It’s absurd that so much of the funding goes to consultants who are sent to tell us what we already know about how to conserve what we are already conserving.”
Representatives from countries across the world will vote on motions this week that will shape future global conservation policy and the allocation of finance. Coica’s Amazonia por la vida (Amazonia for Life) campaign motion is demanding protection of 80% of the Amazon basin by 2025 (protected areas and indigenous territories make up about 45% currently) with the emphasis on indigenous peoples managing those protected areas. They are asking governments to recognise 100% of indigenous land in the Amazon and ban all forms of extractive industries in those areas.
A record number of environmental defenders were killed in 2019 for protecting their land, 40% of whom were from indigenous communities. “Science is saying the best-conserved areas are indigenous territories … yet we have the highest level of murder,” Díaz Mirabal said.
“National parks receive funding and support from governments but when it comes to our indigenous territories we’re left to spill our own blood to defend it. Now it is time for our indigenous territories to be protected with the same level of support and legislation,” he said.
As well as showcasing a range of ideas from campaigners, scientists and conservationists, the summit provides policymakers with a chance to discuss issues in the run-up to the Cop15 “Paris agreement for nature”, due to be negotiated in Kunming next year. The headline target is likely to be protecting 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade (the “30x30” target).
Nadino Calapucha, Claudette Labonté, Carmen Josse and José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal at the Amazonia for Life: 80% by 2025 press conference. Photograph: Arnold Jerocki/Getty
The draft Cop15 agreement includes a clause that traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities should guide decision-making “with their free, prior, and informed consent”. But indigenous groups, academics and campaigners from 18 countries gathered in Marseille at the “Our Land, Our Nature” congress, a “counter-summit” on the eve of the IUCN meeting, called for land rights to be at the heart of conservation, not protected areas. More than 3,000 people attended the event, either in person or online, which included a protest march through the French city.
“The 30x30 target is a structural problem,” said Mordecai Ogada, director of Conservation Solutions Afrika. “We need to rethink the definition of protected areas, those that exist, and we need to look for a more sophisticated model of biodiversity and conservation. That’s where the big organisations have such a challenge, because they find it very difficult to change their own structures.”
‘We need to rethink the definition of protected areas,’ according to Mordecai Ogada. Photograph: Noé Gabriel
The alternative summit included representatives from Survival International, Rainforest Foundation UK and Minority Rights UK, as well as a number of indigenous people with different perspectives on the usefulness of protected areas.
Juan Pablo Gutiérrez, a representative of the Yukpa people in Colombia but living in exile in France, said areas that governments were designating as “protected” had been safeguarded for years by indigenous people.
“What’s happening with 30x30 is that governments want to distract global opinion by proposing solutions that don’t relate to the real problem at all. If you want to attack climate change, you need to attack the causes that are leading to it,” he said, citing western consumption and overexploitation of resources as the key drivers of ecological destruction.
A UN report published earlier this year found indigenous people in South America were the best at looking after forests, with deforestation 50% lower than elsewhere, according to a review of more than 300 studies. Representatives at the Our Land, Our Nature gathering argued that there was little scientific evidence that protecting 30% of the planet would stem biodiversity loss. The previous 10-year UN target agreed in 2010 in Aichi, Japan, set goals that by 2020, 17% of terrestrial areas and 10% of coastal and marine areas would be conserved.
Lara Dominguez, a lawyer with the Minority Rights Group, said: “Despite being very close to achieving the 17% target in many states, biodiversity loss has reached unprecedented levels. Even though we have more protected areas, it hasn’t actually impacted biodiversity in a positive way.”
Dominguez believes these policies are driven more by politics than science and argues that a rights-based approach to conservation would be far more effective.
Campaigners for indigenous peoples’ rights carry a banner in Marseille reading: ‘Change the system, not the climate.’ Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty
Francisco Ramiro Batzín Chojoj, legal representative of the Guatemala-based indigenous organisation Sotz’il, said it was important that indigenous people had a seat at the table and that working towards the 30x30 target was “fundamental”.
“We are calling for indigenous people to be respected in all these initiatives because it’s essential they are involved.”
Stewart Maginnis, global director of the IUCN’s nature-based solutions group, said: “The 30x30 can and must work to support indigenous peoples by strengthening their custodianship, voice and rights.
“Protection for nature conservation need not and should not exclude people,” he said. “Many of the world’s protected and conserved areas are managed in a way where people and communities live and work within their boundaries.”
A UN policy brief on human rights and the environment, released last month, emphasised the need for a dramatic departure from “conservation as usual”. Neville Ash, director of the UN Environment Programme conservation monitoring centre, said indigenous people and communities who governed large areas of land were often not recognised for their extensive contributions to nature conservation. “This needs to change,” he said.
“The draft framework is explicit on the importance of employing rights-based approaches for its implementation, and governments and other actors will need to learn from mistakes of the past and be held accountable for delivering on these future commitments in line with human rights obligations.”
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features
Indigenous Peoples Have a Lot Riding on Chile’s New Constitution
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In June, Chile’s Constitutional Convention was seated, culminating a process that began with spontaneous protests in late 2019 and soon crystallized into demands for an overhaul to the country’s social model and rewriting Chile’s constitution, which dates back to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
As central protagonists in the protest movement that led to the successful constitutional referendum in October 2020, Chile’s Indigenous peoples have sought to make sure that the new constitution drafted by the convention includes formal recognition of their status, as well as a designation of Chile as a plurinational state. Both demands grow out of the deep and complex relationship between the Chilean state and the country’s Indigenous peoples. …