Gathered in NYC in mid-April, 87 Indigenous leaders from 35 countries met to hammer out a set of demands to address a common scourge: the green energy transition that has our peoples under siege.  

Worldwide, we are experiencing land-grabs and a rising tide of criminalization and attacks for speaking out against mining and renewable energy projects that violate our rights with impacts that are being documented by UN and other experts. Their research confirms what we know firsthand.     

And yet political and economic actors continue to ignore the evidence, pushing us aside in their rush to build a system to replace fossil fuels, while guided by the same values that are destroying the natural world.  

Ironically, we released this declaration amid the UN’s sustainability week – renewable energy was on the agenda. We were not.  

Q&A: What you need to know about clean energy and critical minerals supply chains

Indigenous peoples are not opposed to pivoting away from oil and gas, nor are we opposed to investing in renewable energy systems as an alternative.  

But we must have a say. More than half the mines that are expected to produce metals and minerals to serve renewable technologies are on or near the territories of Indigenous peoples and peasant communities.  

Resource extraction causing triple crisis  

In the words of the UN’s Global Resource Outlook 2024, released in March with little fanfare by the UN Environment Programme: “the current model of natural resource extraction…is driving an unprecedented triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution”. 

Mining companies have been offered a path to sustainability. Few have started down that path.  

And they won’t unless global and national decision-makers take advantage of this key moment in history to demand change. Indigenous leaders need to be at the table too.

As donors dither, Indigenous funds seek to decolonise green finance

We are not willing to have our territories become the deserts that mining companies create, leaking toxins into our rivers and soils and poisoning our sources of water and food, and by extension our children. 

The playing field for Indigenous peoples is massively unjust. The authors of the Global Resources Outlook cite evidence of national governments that favor companies’ interests “by removing the judicial protection of Indigenous communities, expropriating land…or even using armed forces to protect mining facilities”.  

Why should this matter to people on the other side of the planet? 

Proven to outperform the public and private sectors, Indigenous peoples conserve some of the world’s most biodiverse regions. Negotiators at global climate events do cite our outsize conservation role, but treaty language allows our governments to decide when and whether to recognize or enforce our rights.  

Companies are advised to “engage” with our communities – not so they can avoid harming us, but to prevent costly conflicts that arise in response to outdated and destructive practices. 

These “externalities” that chase us from our ancestral homes and damage our health and the ecosystems we treasure are revealed only when they become “material”, of concern to investors and relevant to risk analysts. 

Tensions rise over who will contribute to new climate finance goal

Our resistance is costly and material. Failure to properly obtain our consent before sending in the bulldozers can bring a project to a halt, with a price tag as high as $20 million a week. And communities are learning to use the tools of the commercial legal system to defend themselves. 

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School report that, over time, shareholders benefit most when companies heed the demands of their most influential stakeholders. Indigenous peoples are the stakeholders to please.  

Our communities disrupt supply chains, but when our rights are respected, we can also be the best indicators of a company’s intention to avoid harm to people and planet. 

Call for ban on mining in ‘no-go’ zones 

In the declaration we released in New York earlier this month, we called for laws to reduce the consumption of energy worldwide, and we laid out a path for ensuring that the green transition is a just one. 

We urged our governments to recognize and protect our rights as a priority; to end the killings, the violence and the criminalization of our peoples; and to require corporations to secure our free, prior and informed consent, and avoid harming our lands and resources. 

A growing body of evidence suggests that Indigenous peoples rooted to their ancestral lands can draw on traditional knowledge, stretching back over generations, to help nature evolve and adapt to the changing climate. We understand the sustainable use of wild species and hold in our gardens genetic resources that can protect crops of immeasurable economic and nutritional value. 

Current practices for extracting metals and minerals put our peoples at risk and endanger climate, biodiversity, water, global health and food security. Researchers warned earlier this year that the unprecedented scale of demand for “green” minerals will lay waste to more and more land and drive greater numbers of Indigenous and other local peoples from our homes. 

Q&A: What you need to know about critical minerals

So our declaration also calls on governments to impose a ban on the expansion of mining in “no-go” zones – those sites that our peoples identify as sacred and vital as sources of food and clean water. Indigenous communities, rooted in place by time and tradition, can help stop the green transition from destroying biomes that serve all humanity. 

The UN Secretary-General launches a panel on critical minerals today that seems to recognize the importance of avoiding harm to affected communities and the environment.  

This is a step in the right direction, but Indigenous peoples and our leaders – and recognition and enforcement of our rights – must be at the centre of every proposal for mining and renewable energy that affect us and our territories. This is the only way to keep climate “response measures”, made possible by the Paris Agreement, from harming solutions that exist already. 

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Now frustrated Indigenous rights groups are trying a new tactic to speed up change: creating their own funds in a push to boost the flow of money to frontline communities and shift away from what some see as an outdated colonial-style model driven by donors in the Global North. 

Since 2020 – and especially last year – more than half a dozen new Indigenous-led funds have sprung up, largely in forest-rich Brazil but also in developing countries from Indonesia to Mexico.  

Many are still in a start-up phase, but a few have already begun pushing money to frontline communities. They include the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund (MTF), which invested $1.3 million in 32 projects – from chocolate production to tourism and protecting traditional knowledge – in communities from Mexico to Panama last year. 

“We are aiming not only to make the funds reach the real guardians of the forest and the real guardians of mitigating and adapting to climate change, but also to support sustainability, democracy and good governance of all these territories,” said María Pía Hernández, a lawyer and regional manager for the MTF. 

World Bank climate funding greens African hotels while fishermen sink

Multilateral funds can take years to approve projects and often struggle to funnel big pots of nature and climate finance into the smaller-scale projects communities need, Indigenous leaders said.  

The new funds aim to fill the gap by gathering large amounts of money, distributing it nimbly and leap-frogging the barriers faced by forest communities in dealing with traditional funds, such as onerous paperwork. 

“We aim to improve not just the condition of the territories and people who live there but also promote global climatic justice,” Hernández said on the sidelines of last week’s Skoll World Forum, a gathering of social innovators.  

Bypassing the giants 

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund hold their Spring Meetings in Washington this week, focused in part on reshaping lending for climate action, Indigenous communities are already rethinking how to better access the resources they need to protect nature and the climate – and to ensure those on the frontline benefit from changes such as new clean energy infrastructure. 

Along the way, they are setting up new rules and structures in line with their own traditions and beliefs, after years of chafing against constraints imposed by big donors, some of them former colonial powers. 

Fossil fuel debts are illegitimate and must be cancelled

In Canada, for instance, many Indigenous governing bodies now run their own renewable energy utilities, providing a fifth of Canada’s renewables, said Joan Carling, executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International. 

“If we transform the business-as-usual and create the enabling environment and conditions to put Indigenous people at the centre of this, then we can have a truly just, equitable renewable energy for all,” she said. 

A new dashboard released last week by the Rights and Resources Initiative and the Rainforest Foundation Norway shows climate finance for indigenous and local communities rose between 2020 and 2023 to about $517 million per year, a 36 percent increase over the previous four years. 

That increase comes after governments and charitable donors promised $1.7 billion back in 2021 to Indigenous and local communities by 2025 for their role in protecting land and forests, which are considered key to protecting both the climate and biodiversity. 

Yet with much new funding still moving through big international environment organisations and other intermediary agencies, rather than directly to communities, “there is no evidence yet indicating a systematic change in funding modalities,” the groups noted in a report.

Connecting communities with cash 

Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, said improving direct access to funding is the key issue. At least $10 billion in finance for Indigenous and local communities will be needed to meet a global pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, she added. 

Indigenous-led funds believe they can be pivotal to achieving that ramp-up. 

Shandia, established by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities uniting 35 million people from 24 countries, is still in a start-up phase but aims to serve as a conduit for much larger-scale finance to Indigenous and other frontline groups. 

“Millions of dollars are moving in the world. We want to connect claims on the ground to those millions,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach, a Shuar indigenous leader from Ecuador and the alliance’s executive secretary, who was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his work on behalf of Indigenous communities. 

Indonesia’s main Indigenous alliance similarly in 2023 helped establish the Nusantara Fund, while in Brazil a range of Indigenous-led vehicles, including the Podáali Indigenous Amazonian Fund, were launched last year.

Guardians of the forest – and finance?  

Anthony Bebbington, who runs the Ford Foundation’s international natural resources and change change programmes, said the last few years had seen the emergence of substantial new funds, with the potential to grow, that are challenging the traditional ways donors have worked.  

“Funds are saying to us, ‘If you trust us to be guardians of the forest – a role for which we are often harassed and sometimes killed – then there is no justification for you to also not trust us to be guardians of the finance’,” he told an event on the sidelines of the Skoll World Forum. 

In projects backed by the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, for instance, indicators of success are changing from a simple focus on hectares of forest replanted to include things like whether more water is flowing through key rivers, said Hernández, whose fund so far gets 80 percent of its support from philanthropies. 

An Indigenous Ramas man lifts a crayfish trap in the Rio Indio river, San Juan de Nicaragua, Nicaragua on February 16, 2022.(Photo: Reuters/Antoine Boureau/Hans Lucas)

The MTF also actively seeks out and helps prepare applications from Indigenous and local communities that could benefit from its support rather than just accepting grant proposals, as traditional donors often do.  

David Rothschild, senior director of partnerships for Nia Tero, a US non-profit that works with Indigenous groups, said avoiding heavy paperwork was key to enabling the new funds take off. 

“What they don’t want is to become another entity in the system operating in a colonial way. How do they not fall into the same patterns that have been destructive, while still reporting to donors?” he asked. 

Hernández said new ways of working are developing, if sometimes too slowly. “We are not asking for blank cheques,” she emphasised. “But we deserve a little bit of consideration.”

(Reporting by Laurie Goering; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post As donors dither, Indigenous funds seek to decolonise green finance   appeared first on Climate Home News.

The sobering effect of drunken forests: Why this Arctic community chose conservation over Big Oil

By Edward Struzik

Angus Sanguez is 67-years-old and whippet-thin. His face has been weathered by years of living in the Dehcho region in Canada’s Northwest Territories, a sub-Arctic wilderness that is on the frontlines of climate change.

Sanguez was born and raised in the Dene community in Tthets’ek’ehdeli (also known as Jean Marie River), one of six indigenous communities in the Dehcho region. Covering 215,615 sq km, the Dehcho is twice the size of England, inhabited by only 3,000 people, as well as countless moose, bears and bison that roam over a massive storehouse of carbon trapped in permafrost.

Sanguez was visiting the Scotty Creek Research station in Canada’s sub-Arctic when he had a eureka moment while gazing upon all the dying trees that could no longer root themselves in the thawing peat. “So that’s why they call this a ‘drunken forest,’” he said. “I heard that term many times. But I never knew what it meant. Now I see these how these trees that have fallen down everywhere are likes drunks coming out of a bar, falling down and leaning up against each other. We are seeing a lot of this.”

Climate change is the latest threat to the lives and livelihoods of the Dene people and other indigenous communities throughout Canada. For decades, they have successfully fended off Big Oil and resisted wit one notable exception, offers to partner with fossil fuel companies, opting instead to collaborate with scientists and the national government to create Canada’s first indigenous protected area in 2018 and appoint indigenous guardians to monitor environmental changes. Scientists say their approach could serve as a conservation and climate adaptation model for other indigenous communities.

Climate threats

Climate change is transforming the Dehcho. It is one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth.

In recent years, Sanquez and the Dene have experienced catastrophic flooding, massive landslides that have drained and browned lakes, and runaway wildfires like the ones in 2014 that burned 570,000 hectares of forest in the southern territories. Those 380 fires released roughly 94.5 megatonnes of carbon, half of the carbon sequestered annually in all of Canada, as well as a potentially toxic form of mercury that has been locked in permafrost.

William Quinton, a Laurier University scientist who has been monitoring the impact of climate change on permafrost in the Dehcho for 23 years, runs the Scotty Creek Research Station 50 km south of Fort Simpson, a remote village, 500km west of the capital Yellowknife.

Permafrost is like a cement that holds carbon rich peat, rocks and mineral-richly soils together. In addition to warmer temperatures, drilling for oil, and mining for metals and minerals can hasten its thaw and complicate the maintenance and cleanup of mines such as the abandoned Cantung mine located along one of the headwaters of the Nahanni River system.

The thawing permafrost can also be seen in the seismic lines around Scotty Creek that were bulldozed to identify sources of oil and gas, The lines, the single largest human disturbance in the Dehcho region, were streaming with water that had percolated up from the thawing permafrost.

In the 1950s, permafrost covered nearly 75% of the 152 square km drainage area of Scotty Creek. It’s down to a third of that. Where there still is permafrost, it is often covered by a layer of talik, unfrozen ground that does not refreeze in winter when snow acts like a blanket, trapping some of the heat.

Thick, long lasting snow cover followed by a quick spring meltdown helps spread the thaw downwards and outwards. Trees literally drown as the ground surface collapses into depressions, and as melting snow and rain fills those depressions with water. Quinton has had to move his research camp twice to avoid being flooded out.

“What we’re seeing perhaps more clearly than any other place in the world is ecosystem change occurring in fast motion,” said Quinton. “The involvement of the Dene is important to our understanding of what is happening because the elders here have a longer record of what was there in the past and how it is affecting fish and wildlife.”

From Fort Simpson, a small single-engine float plane flew us across a wilderness that spread out as far as the eye could see towards the Mackenzie Mountains where the last icefields in the mainland of the Northwest Territories are wasting away as fast as sea ice is melting.

The lessons learned at Scotty Creek have been sobering, said Quinton at Goose Lake. It was so hot and buggy that on shore, the typically gregarious ravens (datsą́) and trickers whisky jacks, (ohk’aa), were lying low. The Mackenzie Valley can be the hottest place in Canada in summer and the coldest in winter.

“It’s tough to be a tree in this landscape,” Quinton said. “The thawing that we are seeing is turning forests into bogs and other wetlands that may not be able to support the fish and animals that the Dene rely on for food and clothing.”

“The implications for water quality, vegetation changes, biodiversity and for the people living in this part of the world are profound,” he said.

The best way of visualising what Quinton is talking about is to describe what occurred 300km to the northeast in the Mackenzie bison sanctuary. Warming temperatures and the 2014 wildfires thawed permafrost so intensely that incoming water from groundwater channels drove most of the 700 wood bison out of the protected area.

The exodus was so complete, according to Terry Armstrong, a biologist working for the government of the Northwest Territories. He told Climate Home that he had a difficult time finding animals when he flew in to do a count the following year.

No one can say with certainty whether it was swamping that drove the animals out. But York University scientist Jennifer Korosi who was there at Scotty Creek says it’s hard not to make the connection considering the amount of water in the sanctuary doubled between 1986 and 2014 and Falaise Lake, the largest in the sanctuary, grew by 824%.

The tree ring and sediment coring Korosi did indicates that flooding has occurred in the past, but not nearly on this scale, for the past 300 years. Indigenous elders say nothing like it has happened in their lifetime.

Fusing science with indigenous knowledge

The message from indigenous elders and leaders at Fort Simpson was unambiguous. “Climate change is not going to wait for us to find a way of adapting and mitigating,” said Gladys Norwegian who was once chief of Jean Marie River and grand chief of the Dehcho.

“It’s happening now. We need to work as partners with scientists at Scotty Creek to see what is coming. We also need to get our own act together,” Norwegian said.

What the Dene community would like to know from the Canadian scientists they are collaborating with is how future warming will further impact their food, water and infrastructure, which is built on rapidly thawing permafrost. They are working with scientists at Scotty Creek as equal partners, to learn and better evaluate resource developments and climate impacts on their land.

Quinton believes the “unique fusion of science and indigenous knowledge” provides a model for other indigenous communities in Canada facing climate threats.

“It is a clear departure from how science and land management was conducted in the north in the past,” he said. “Because the livelihoods of the people here are so closely dependent on what is happening on the land, a management approach that puts them in leadership positions is critical.”

Not only does thawing lead to erosion and flooding, it dissolves carbon in water and enhances microbial activity that can transform harmless elemental mercury securely stored in permafrost into toxic methylmercury. This brownification of streams, rivers and lakes is how University of Waterloo scientist Heidi Swanson and University of Alberta ecologist Dave Olefeldt got involved.

With Sanguez’s assistance, Swanson is testing fish for mercury and at their request, advising people what fish they can eat. Olefeldt and his team are tracking the movement of mercury through these catchments.

There is no discernable sign yet that the contaminated fish are affecting human health. But George Low, who coordinates the aquatic resources and oceans management programme for the Dehcho First Nations, says it’s important to keep track of what’s going on, given how many fish are consumed by indigenous people.

It’s not just a matter of monitoring the situation. Community members like Sanguez are also assisting Swanson in an experiment to remove some of the older, bigger fish from lakes. This leaves the younger fish with more food and the opportunity to grow fast without accumulating so much mercury.

The merging of science and indigenous knowledge has been a long time in the making largely because of prejudices that persisted since the days when Simpson, the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, was in charge and described the Dene women he bedded as his “bits of brown.”

A more constructive meeting of minds began to slowly gel in the mid -1970s when a consortium of energy companies proposed building a 3,860 km long natural gas pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley. No one in the indigenous communities knew how a pipeline as big as that might affect caribou migration, or whether it could stand up to thaw. Neither did the energy companies. In spite of many other knowledge gaps, the Canadian government enthusiastically supported the project until public hearings overseen by Justice Thomas Berger came to a fiery head in Fort Simpson in December 1975.

Speaking for all the Dene people, Jim Antoine, a young leader from Fort Simpson, told Berger that he was willing to lay down his life to stop the $10 billion project.

Antoine’s speech made news all across Canada. Few people believed that it would end as badly as it did in Mexico when the Chontales Indians were violently cleared out as they tried to block access roads to oil and gas installations in 1976. But threats to blow up a pipeline in northern Canada rattled government and resources industry officials who were used to getting their way with indigenous people.

In the end, Berger was sympathetic. In a landmark report that got a reluctant nod from the Canadian government, the judge recommended a ten year moratorium on development in the region until land claims were resolved and wilderness protected for the benefit of the Dene.

Antoine went on to become premier of the Northwest Territories. At the request of the Dene, Nahanni National Park – a United Nations World Heritage site – was expanded to protect the headwaters of many of the rivers that drain into the Mackenzie watershed.

Indigenous guardians

The biggest development occurred this year when the Dehcho First Nations and the Canadian government finalised a deal to set aside 14,218 square km of land in the Horn Plateau, Hay River Lowlands and Great Slave Plain as a national wildlife area. Edéhzhíe became the first indigenous protected area in Canada in 2018 and the government provided a $10 million grant (£6.93m) to the Edéhzhíe Trust Fund to support the Dehcho K’éhodi Stewardship and Guardians Program.

The indigenous guardians work with scientists to monitor climate and environmental changes in the region. They also share scientists’ insights with community members.

William Alger, one of the guardians, is positive about the programme. “I learn from elders where the fish and animals are and the changes they see that are taking place,” he said.

Quinton sees the guardian programme as a way of “ground truthing” the science that he and his colleagues are doing. Once the Dene learn how do the science at Scotty Creek, they will be able to take control of the programme.

“Southern researchers like me have to come to terms with the fact that while the current system in which we operate is well-intentioned, it doesn’t necessarily address the needs of the local community,” Quinton said. “Too often, we fly in and fly out with the data without communicating what that data means.”

The Dene in the Dehcho are not the only indigenous people in northern Canada doing this. The Gwitchin of Old Crow in the Yukon have been moving in this direction for some time. The Dene and Metis people in Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories recently signed an agreement to establish an indigenous protected area – Ts’udé Nilįné Tuyeta – which will be just as big as Edéhzhíe.

Despite the progress, the Deh Cho claim to land ownership has not been resolved. And while oil flowed out of the territories from another pipeline for more than a half century, Deh Cho villages like Fort Simpson are still shipping dirty diesel in from the south to heat homes and to keep the lights on.

“It’s crazy,” said James Tsetso, a Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation councillor who was at Scotty Creek. “And look at all of the wood in the forests around us. Why are we still shipping wood products from the south to rebuild and fix up homes that were destroyed by last year’s floods?”

There is no doubt that the Dene need jobs. It’s why they are more open-minded about resource extraction. But some are leery of mining companies like those that operated Mactung and Cantung in the Mackenzie mountains. Neither offered meaningful employment to locals before filing for bankruptcy. Nor has there been an equitable amount of work for northerners to participate in the $2.2 billion cleanup of these and many other abandoned mine sites in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Gerry Antoine, the Dene National grand chief, was just 20 years old when he volunteered to rally the Dene during the Berger Inquiry. His brother’s speech still resonates. But getting angry, he says, will bear no fruit.

Antoine is confident that the Dene will adapt to climate change, just as they have with so many challenges they have faced over thousands of years. But he wonders whether southerners will fare as well, given their short history in North America, and their desire to take more than they need.

“It’s all about balance,” Antoine said, while preparing a moose hide for tanning. “You take only what you need from Mother Earth as we try to do here. That’s really the best way of dealing with climate change.”

The post The Arctic community that chose conservation over Big Oil appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UN Biodiversity summit, due to take place in Kunming in October, is a critical moment for countries to agree on a global framework to halt the destruction of the planet’s plants and wildlife.

But the coronavirus outbreak has forced UN agencies to relocate preparatory talks due to take place next month in Kunming to the offices of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy.

The move came after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a “public health emergency of international concern” because of the rapid spread of the virus. More than 200 people in China have died since the beginning of the epidemic and nearly 10,000 cases have now been reported.

Meanwhile, travel restrictions to and from China have intensified in recent days. On Thursday, the Italian government announced it was suspending all flights between Italy and China. Travel restrictions could make it more difficult for Chinese participants to attend the meeting.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) said it was committed to ensure preparations for the October summit “proceed in a timely and effective manner”.

Spawning crisis

The desert locusts swarm in the Horn of Africa could provoke a humanitarian crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned.

The insects are ravaging the East African region in the worst outbreak in decades and is causing “an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods,” the UN agency has said.

Urgent calls for funding to stop the outbreak have been issued as the locusts have started laying eggs and the FAO fears new swarms could form in Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

Fuel blunder

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has come under pressure to regulate new shipping fuels introduced at the start of the year to reduce sulphur levels, which could be accelerating warming in the Arctic.

Research shows the new fuel blends could be causing a surge in black carbon emissions – a short-lived but potent pollutant that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to warming.

The fuels which were designed to improve air quality and protect human health could be increasing the shipping’s sector climate impact, especially in the Arctic region.

Now campaigners are asking tough questions about who knew what and when about the new fuels’ potential impacts on emissions. “It’s hard to see how experts in marine fuels like yourselves could not have been aware” of the risks, they said.

Carbon source

A new study found that indigenous and protected land in the Amazon emit far less carbon dioxide than the rest of the rainforest.

The study is the first to comprehensively include carbon losses from forest degradation (such as illegal logging and mining, floods and droughts), deforestation and forest growth and provides a detailed carbon account of the changing land use.

It prompted calls for greater support for indigenous land rights as a cost-effective way to limit climate change. Jocelyn Timperley reports.

Ratification

10 countries still haven’t ratified the Paris Agreement. Turkey and four large oil exporting countries, including Iran, Iraq, Angola and Libya, have not formally endorsed the agreement. Alister Doyle takes a look at who makes the list.

Quick hits

• UN relocates biodiversity talks to Italy from China after coronavirus emergency
• UN biodiversity meeting in China under review following coronavirus outbreak
• Locusts lay eggs as plague worsens in Horn of Africa, UN warns
• Indigenous lands, protected areas limit Amazon’s carbon emissions
• IMO under pressure to regulate new ship fuels over Arctic warming
• Which countries have not ratified the Paris climate agreement?

And in climate conversations

• UN ruling on climate refugees could be gamechanger for climate action

The post Coronavirus side effect – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Canada’s annual average temperature has warmed 1.7C since 1948, but in northern Canada it has increased by 2.3C.

The Canadian North is feeling the impacts of climate change more acutely than the rest of the country. And indigenous communities, representing half of the residents of the three Canadian northern territories, are the most vulnerable to these climate changes.

Northern populations have observed landscape and natural resources changes like permafrost thaw, shifts in wildlife and plant diversity, and changes in water and food quality.

Indigenous knowledge is an essential asset for communities to adapt to climate change, by knowing the land, using the local natural resources, sharing capital, and taking a community approach to local issues. But it is well documented that the most vulnerable communities across the globe are excluded from decision-making processes and thus marginalised.

Indigenous groups in northern Canada, with their traditional interpersonal networks and social initiatives, seem to have developed a unique structure to cope with climate change and environmental stressors without relying on federal or local policies and infrastructure. Based on this, it seems that one way to enhance peoples’ resilience to climate change is to improve the social capital — or social networks — of populations.

Countries’ fossil fuel production plans inconsistent with Paris Agreement

Social capital as a concept is not new. American political scientist Robert Putnam helped to popularise the term in the late ‘90s. Basically it is the creation and maintenance of healthy social contacts that can improve the “flow of information, trust, reciprocity, co-operation and productivity” within communities.

Knowing neighbours and exchanging various favours is a component of social capital.

This understanding of social cohesion is also used in epidemiology, public health, resource distribution and environment policy studies. The World Health Organization (WHO) uses the concept of social capital to increase participation in its programs across the globe. The Canadian government also tracks trends in social capital.

The acknowledgement of the value of social networks can bring insights into how federal and local governments can guide climate change adaptation initiatives.

Although the response to climate change varies greatly across the country, Canada’s focus on creating policy to help communities adapt to climate change includes “the development of more stringent building standards for areas where heavier snowfall is expected, or limiting development in coastal areas where sea level is projected to rise.”

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The current Canadian policy framework does not differentiate between northern and southern regions. Strategies to address climate change in southern Canada benefit from institutionalisation and access to infrastructure. Conversely, strategies in northern Canada benefit from indigenous knowledge and traditional social structure.

The social capital scores collected by the Canadian government  are usually visualised as a scale but it does not include the nuances of the northern regions. On the scale, the Maritime and Western provinces score higher than inland provinces. Québec has the lowest score in Canada.

The differences in climate policies across Canada might be due to the regional environmental challenges, but they are also altered by the different geopolitical, social, cultural and historical contexts, which affect social capital.

Small communities tend to have strong social capital, which can be seen when neighbours cut wood for elders or hunters bring meat for single mothers. Indigenous holistic approaches highlight the importance of the connection with the land, which impacts hunting methods and includes knowledge of medicinal plants.

Community sharing is another component that increases community resilience. Food sharing circles are traditional kinship-based food networks to reduce food insecurity.

Stakeholders push for progress on France’s climate adaptation plans

One study shows how traditional social structures have deeply embedded food redistribution procedures that have adapted through history. Such redistribution of resources is not found among most southern communities in Canada.

Canada’s actions for climate changes neither mentions food security nor resource redistribution. Also, although the World Bank and the World Health Organization have developed a set of tools to assess social capital to increase the level of participation of everyday citizens, Canada has yet to adopt social capital in its approach to climate change adaptation.

At best, Canada’s climate framework recognises the North is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

But Canada should learn from the experiences of northern communities and integrate social capital in its policy framework. While the North might be the most affected by climate changes, its resilience might also be the highest.

Mylène Ratelle is a research manager at the School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, and Francis Paquette is an associate researcher at the Université de Montréal. The story was initially published in The Conversation. 

The post Climate policy needs to reflect resilience of northern indigenous communities appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is where the gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be produced. Yamal did not originally belong to Russia. The Russian Empire began the colonisation of Yamal in the 16th century.

The Russian empire was mainly interested in profiteering from the region’s fur, which it sold to Europe. One third of the Russian state’s public treasury derived from the fur trade with the West. Before that could happen, land was seized. The indigenous peoples of Yamal resisted colonisation and, in response, the colonialists brutally killed them.

The Soviets separated indigenous peoples from their children and reindeers by force. Indigenous peoples have organised the Mandalada, a movement to safeguard their traditional way of life. After fierce resistance, Mandalada participants were arrested.

The discovery of oil and gas deposits in the Yamal Peninsula, which promised the region prosperity, did not improve, but rather worsened the situation. Gazprom continues to seize the lands of the indigenous peoples of Yamal in an attempt to extract even more gas. As a result, the local population is left without grazing [land] for its reindeer. For the indigenous peoples of Yamal, little has changed since the 16th century: the empire took furs from them and sold them to the West. Now the empire is taking oil and gas from them and selling it to the West. The lion’s share of tax revenue from the sale of fossil fuels does not remain in the Yamal region, but is sent to Moscow.

Russia formally joins Paris Agreement

One of the serious climatic problems in Yamal is gas flaring. It is barbaric and wasteful. Due to procedural imperfections, the gas is simply burned and released into the atmosphere, increasing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Bank, Russia is the world’s biggest gas flare emitter. In 2018, Russia accounted for nearly 21.3% of global gas flaring.

In the Yamal Peninsula, there are about 1,500 such flares. Gazprom systematically pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In 2015, the local prosecutor’s office in Yamal increased methane emissions six-fold and carbon black emissions 37-fold.

The Russian authorities are not fighting Gazprom’s environmental crimes. The fines and warnings that Yamal prosecutors impose on Gazprom don’t have any impact on the company’s behaviour.

Indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples saw their rights violated during the construction of Nord Stream 2. The gas pipeline destroyed the native Finno-Ugric lands and the Kurgalsky reserve, which is home to rare plants, mosses and bird species.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the project, has hidden the true value of the Kurgalsky reserve. The real consequences of the construction of the gas pipeline on this nature reserve were never mentioned, be it during the public hearings on the project in Russia and other countries, or in the company’s Espoo report.

Greenpeace Austria has obtained secret minutes of meetings between the Russian government, Nord Stream 2 AG and Gazprom, during which they discussed changes to environmental legislation.

Surveys began illegally, without any permits, on the Kurgalsky reserve. As a result of this intrusion into a unique ecosystem, hundreds of rare plants have been destroyed.

The fight for the world’s largest forest

Double standards are rife when it comes to carving out the routes of the gas pipeline in Germany and Russia.  In Germany, where the value of the coastal territory is lower than that of the Kurgalsky reserve, Nord Stream 2 AG considers that it is possible to use a micro-tunneling construction method. In Russia, under similar conditions and with the incomparably higher value of the Kurgalsky Reserve, the “traditional method of construction with a 85m wide open trench” has been adopted. This method has a negative impact on the ecosystem of the Kurgalsky Reserve.

Nord Stream 2 violates Russian rights. The truth is that after selling Russian gas to the West, there are not enough to meet the needs of the Russian people. Gas programmes have been reduced: 30% of Russians live in gas-free houses.

The Russian authorities fix this internal energy supply problem in the most environmentally damaging way possible: they use coal instead of gas. The operation of coal-fired power plants, which are not equipped with modern filters, leads to real environmental catastrophes. For example, in Krasnoyarsk, residents often witness the “black sky” effect caused by finely fragmented coal dust.

Thanks to the Nord Stream 2 project, Europeans will receive less polluting gas. While the Russians will choke on coal dust, the indigenous peoples of Yamal will continue to suffer from gas combustion by Gazprom and will be deprived of the best pastures, and the unique Kurgalsky reserve will suffer severely. With the proceeds from the sale of fossil fuels, Putin’s regime is able to achieve its archaic political ambitions, carry out political repression, seize the territories of neighbouring states, bribe Western politicians and produce propaganda. Obviously, without the demand for Russian gas, Putin’s plan would simply not work.

Are Europeans okay with this reality and with the price of “cheap” Russian gas?

Yevgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist who received the Goldman Prize for the Environment in 2012 for her fight to preserve the Khimki forest from the Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway.

The post What is the real cost of cheap Russian gas? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The year was 2008, and there was a heated debate about the demarcation of Raposa/Serra do Sol Indigenous Land (TIRSS), inhabited by 25,000 people from five different ethnicities in Brazil’s far north. While waiting for a final decision from the Supreme Court, white farmers resorted to violence. In the worst incident, ten indigenous people were shot, although not fatally.

“[Bolsonaro] said he didn’t understand why a handful of poorly educated persons who didn’t speak Portuguese had more rights than Brazilian patriots,” Wapichana tells Climate Home News, describing a Congressional hearing about TIRSS that both attended. “We were shocked that a lawmaker could have such a racist, hateful view.”

The Supreme Court found in favour of the indigenous groups. Wapichana, the first indigenous woman to get a law degree in Brazil, played a critical role, presenting oral arguments in the case. White farmers left the area and received compensation. But a decade later, that indigenous victory is threatened.

Last year, Wapichana made history again, becoming the first indigenous woman to win election to Congress. Bolsonaro became president, meanwhile, with a campaign pledge to review TIRSS’ demarcation and open the area to mining as well as the return of white farmers.

“It is possible to explore rationally. And on the indigenous side, pay royalties and integrate them into society,” said the then president-elect in December. Bolsonaro has previously declared “minorities [should] either adapt or simply vanish” and compared indigenous lands to a “human zoo”, where they live in the “Stone Age”.

Bolsonaro gave the task to revise TIRSS and other indigenous land demarcations to the cattle rancher Nabhan Garcia. Until last year, he was the head of the Ruralist Democratic Union (UDR), a far-right organization which has historically opposed land demarcations and agrarian reform.

In mid-January, Garcia, who is now the secretary for land affairs, visited the city Pacaraima, which was almost enclosed by the TIRSS area.

Bolsonaro’s plans have been seen as a major threat to Brazil’s Amazon forest. Indigenous territories in the region cover an area twice the size of Spain. Only 1.3% of it has been deforested, according to the NGO Imazon. That is much less than the 20% of forest cleared in the Amazon region as a whole.

In TIRSS, the 25,000-strong indigenous population have vowed to resist on several fronts, including Wapichana’s presence in Brasília. A crucial part of the fight for them is to disavow Bolsonaro’s claims that they live in the “stone age” and are isolated from the rest of Brazilian society.

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In the three-day visit to Surumu, one of the TIRSS’ four regions, the communities were eager to offer local products, such as fish, manioc flour, mango, banana, pepper – and lots of beef. The region covers 17,500 square kilometres, roughly the size of Kuwait.

Red meat may sound at odds with conservation, as livestock is a major driver of deforestation. But this part of the Amazon next to Roraima Mount (the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World novel) is savannah, a natural pasture for cattle.

White farmers started to introduce cattle to the region around the mid-19th century. Indigenous people were employed as cheap labour, but it was not until the 1970s that they started to own livestock themselves, thanks to donations from progressive Catholic missionaries.

After the white farmers left, the indigenous communities removed most of the wire fences and expanded their flocks. Now, they own about 50,500 cattle in the region, according to state official figures.

“We are living well. My sons and I are not starving,” says Elisa da Silva, 42, from Macuxi people, who identifies herself as a “vaqueira” (cowgirl). “If the president comes here with soldiers, I have my arrow.”

Beside the natural pasture, another difference from white farmers is ownership. Each community, which varies in size, has its own flock, but families can raise their own cattle, too.

The leader of the 36 communities in Surumu, Anselmo Dionisio Filho, 42, explains the cattle herds are a form of savings to be used for collective activities, as well as to pay for more complex medical treatment.

“We have to fight this narrative that the indigenous peoples are an obstacle to development,” says Wapichana, adding tourism and biodiversity knowledge as other activities.  “We have to work in order to become the protagonists, too.”

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The post Brazil’s first indigenous congresswoman defends her people’s rights from Bolsonaro appeared first on Climate Home News.

Any day, the government could decide to start extracting oil or constructing a highway, exactly where your family goes to sleep every night, without consulting you. Just picture the mine or highway polluting the water you drink and poisoning the soil up to a point that crops can hardly grow. On top of this, every day you are pushed to speak a foreign language in a country that endangers your culture and way of life.

This scenario is not fictitious. It is a reality for many of the 370 million people worldwide who are indigenous. If there could be a simple way to define them, we can agree that they are the living descendants of the pre-colonised inhabitants of lands now dominated by others.

Ten years ago on Wednesday, indigenous peoples around the globe achieved the most substantial victory to protect their lands: the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Indigenous peoples gathered in a communal assembly Peru (Photo: Vlad Dumitrescu)

The adoption of this declaration has been a breaking point, given the fact that 144 countries reaffirmed that indigenous peoples are entitled without discrimination to all human rights recognised in international law. Since 2007, the UNDRIP has guided global efforts to overcome and repair the historical denial of their most basic right to ancestral lands and self-determination.

This was possible by recognising indigenous peoples possess collective rights as a group, meaning indispensable rights to be able to exist. This is perhaps the reason why many find it difficult to relate to their struggles, since dominant societies base policy making and development actions on the protection of individual rights, such as the right to property or privacy.

Report: Worst land-related killings in decades expose Amazon’s lawless frontier

Representing 5% of the world’s population spread over 70 countries, today indigenous peoples have gained increasing visibility for raising their voices on aggressive development policies.

As the world moves fast to explore and exploit new territories to meet increasing consumption, indigenous peoples are at the top list of those murdered for defending their land. Almost 130 environmental activists have been killed so far in 2017, and indigenous communities are the ones suffering most from the expansion of mining.

In a week from now, four activists defending their lands or natural resources are expected to be killed. Most of them will be indigenous peoples resisting illegal extractions in Latin America.

This global trend is not a coincidence. Indigenous territories are the richest in biodiversity and today more than ever they are becoming the new battleground for human rights.

UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples James Anaya visits Mapuche land in Argentina (Photo: Alejandro Parellada/IWGIA

Extractive industries are a concrete threat to indigenous communities. They are the ones who open op their homelands to fill the pockets of agribusinessman advancing monocultivation in of soya in Brazil or forcing evictions in the name of wildlife conservation in Tanzania.

Profit wins over rights. Venezuela approved the creation of AMO (Orinoco Mining Arc) region, a mega mining project that will give access to 150 companies from 35 countries to 12% of the national territory. In the meantime, indigenous land demarcation has only met 13% of the cases in the last 17 years.

Aggressive developments like this can also be worsened by a context of militarisation. In the Philippines, the expansion of oil palm in Mindanao does not involve indigenous communities and carries on violations of rights with the complicity of government officials.

Another is the case where climate change triggers land disputes. In Kenya, the recurrent drought bring clashes between Maasai pastoralists and farmers. The chain of events is pretty straightforward: when there is no water, no grass grows and pastoralists’ cattle starve to death.

No matter which region of the world we zoom in, indigenous peoples are left unprotected to defend what is theirs. If states and business fail to protect those last standing on the diversity we all depend on, what else would be there to be exploited?

Suppressing their demands, will have an impact on how our planet will look like if extraction keeps expanding. Many would think this gap has nothing to do with protecting the environment, but it does to a great extent.

Indigenous peoples have demanded environmental justice way before climate change became a mainstream issue. Today we have a chance to lift up their declaration and take their land rights seriously to ensure we all have a land to stand on.

Pamela Jacquelin-Andersen works at the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The post Indigenous peoples are dying in a global war for their lands appeared first on Climate Home News.

“They poison the rivers and the land,” Veron tells Climate Home. “They plant more and more, for sugar cane and refineries,” and when the sugar cane fields are burned to make the crop easier to harvest, the smoke “is like an atomic bomb exploding”.

Veron is touring Europe to appeal for solidarity against violent takeovers of indigenous land for soya and sugar cane plantations, and cattle ranches. For him, it is deeply personal: his father Marcos Veron was murdered in a territorial dispute.

The state of Brazil recognises 13.8% of its territory as indigenous land (1,173,106 square kilometres, an area five times the size of the United Kingdom). But the Kaiowá are being driven out of their lawfully recognised land in Mato Grosso do Sul.

Brazilian NGO Conselho Indigenista Missionario (Indigenous Missionary Council or Cimi), documents the violence. A 2015 report counts 754 killings of indigenous leaders in Brazil between 2003 and 2014. Out of these, 390, more than half, occurred in Mato Grosso do Sul.

Exclusive: Worst land-related killings in decades expose Amazon’s lawless frontier

Without access to their lands, the Guarani can’t hunt or fish, or plant enough crops to feed themselves. Since 2005, according to NGO Survival International, 53 Guarani children have died of starvation.

Instead, the Kaiowá often live in makeshift tents and shacks, in small camps between the fenced off plantations and busy motorways.

“Each of the roadside camps is tiny, maybe 180 metres by 40 or 50 metres, smaller than a football pitch,” Sarah Shenker, senior campaigner at Survival International told Climate Home. There might be 15 to 100 people living on each patch of land. “There is no space. No clean water, constant illness,” says Shenker.

As a result, the Kaiowá people have the highest suicide rate in the world. Since 1986, Survival International has documented 517 Guarani suicides – the youngest reported to be nine years old. The UN described the situation as a humanitarian crisis.

In a bid for international support, Veron is visiting the UK, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Spain. While visiting the UK, Veron spoke at SOAS University, protested outside the Brazilian embassy, and spoke with the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Senior lecturer in the theory, policy and practice of development at SOAS University, Leandro Vergara Camus, called the tour “an extraordinary measure”.

Survival International’s director Stephen Corry said at the protest outside the UK’s Brazilian embassy that “tribal people are dying as Brazilian politicians deliberately allow ranchers and soya barons to steal and destroy Indian territory”.

Report: “Beef caucus” takes over indigenous policies in Brazil

The agribusiness lobby in Brazil is deeply influential, fighting any environmental and indigenous rights laws that could limit the sector’s expansion.

Justice minister Osmar Serraglio, who is responsible for demarcating indigenous territory, has told indigenous people to stop demanding land rights. Shortly after taking office in March, he said: “We’re going to provide them with decent living standards. We’re going to stop discussing land. Does land keep anyone’s belly full?”

Last month Congress rolled back protection for 1.1 million hectares of forest and national park. The environment ministry has also had its budget cut by 51%, raising questions over how it can enforce forest protections.

There is evidence indigenous territories have lower deforestation rates. Veron says his people would take better care of the environment. “We are nature, it is in our songs, our chanting, our spirituality. When we go back to our land we will bring back the forest, our whole life is in the forest.”

Ranchers and plantation owners employ private security guards to keep out the Kaiowá. “They are hired to intimidate,” says Shenker. In the camps, “you can hear gunshots all day and night.”

The Cimi report states indigenous people in camps “were shot, and some were tortured. In some cases the camps were destroyed”.

When someone is shot, “first, there is chaos,” says Shenker. “People run away into any nearby forest. This is how people get dispersed and go missing. No one knows where they are. It also means that it takes a while to get the news of the killing out.”

Once news of a killing reaches organisations on the ground it is reported to the police.

“In theory, the police should then investigate. Sometimes they do, sometimes it is not clear if they investigate or not. But either way, it doesn’t get far, the police put in no effort,” says Shenker. There is “hardly ever a result, an arrest, or anyone going to prison”.

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After years of working as a campaigner, Shenker can only recall one case where a suspect ended up in a court room: the suspected murderer of Veron’s father, Marcos Veron.

In a common area at SOAS’s London campus, Veron wrings his hands and picks at his fingernails. Looking at his feet, he says quietly: “someone claiming to own the land hired people to kill my father.”

Marcos Veron’s suspected killer was convicted of lesser crimes, then released from prison early, says Shenker. “Once they are in the courtroom, they have connections, they are not convicted of murder… There is a culture of impunity.”

One of the key aims of the European tour, says Veron, is getting observers to document what is happening in Brazil. When asked why Europeans are required, Veron replies, “all of our people, all our writers, they get killed”.

“Public pressure does usually work,” says Shenker. “By far the best way [for Europeans] to stop this is to watch and then join in with activism, to write emails and letters, and to spread the word.”

The post Brazilian indigenous leader appeals for solidarity against land grabs appeared first on Climate Home News.

While the US has climate change denier Scott Pruitt leading the government’s environmental protection, in Brazil, the new head of the ministry in charge of demarcating indigenous lands believes that it is not up to the federal government to do that.

Lawmaker Osmar Serraglio, who took over as justice minister on 7 March, has sent shockwaves through Brazil’s indigenous and environment movements by calling on Indians to stop demanding land rights and announcing a freeze on the process of the recognition of claims.

“We’re going to provide them with decent living standards. We’re going to stop discussing land. Does land keep anyone’s belly full?” the minister said in an interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo published three days after he took office.

Article 231 of the 1988 Constitution establishes that indigenous peoples have “original rights over the lands that they have traditionally occupied” and it is the government’s duty to mark out and protect these claims. In January, the responsibility for this process was shifted from the national Indian foundation, Funai, to the justice ministry.

“Our assessment is this minister was picked with the sole purpose of withholding land demarcation,” said Sônia Guajajara, the national coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples (APIB), in a phone interview with Climate Home. “In reality, he is working so the land will be given to [the farmers]. We are in a war moment.”

The government officially recognises indigenous rights to 13.8% of Brazil’s territory, or 1,173,106 square kilometres (almost five times the area of the United Kingdom). Most of this is in the Amazon. As well as providing security and tenure, granting indigenous land tenure has been shown to drastically reduce deforestation rates.

There are many more outstanding claims. About one third of identified indigenous lands are still in process, according to Márcio Santilli, a former president of Funai.

In regions such as Mato Grosso do Sul, midwest Brazil, many such claims are disputed by cattle ranchers and soybean farmers who occupy the land.

In his fifth parliamentary term, Seraglio is a prominent member of the “beef caucus”, a group of legislators who represent agricultural interests. Disputes over land between farmers and indigenous peoples in Brazil are as old as the first European settlements.

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A member of the ruling Democratic Movement party, 30% of Serraglio’s 2014 election campaign contributions came from agribusinesses. He is one the main advocates of PEC 215, a proposed constitutional amendment that would shift the power to demarcate indigenous land from the executive to the historically conservative-controlled Congress.

In the past few years, opposition to PEC 215 has galvanised the indigenous movement. The current demarcation process is fragile and slow, they argue, but there are more chances to be heard in the executive than in Congress. The beef caucus has 207 out of 513 lawmakers in the lower chamber (Congress), according to Agência Pública. Indians, who represent only 0.4% of Brazil’s population, do not have any representatives.

Along with the “Bible caucus” (evangelical Christians), the beef caucus is crucial to the political survival of President Michel Temer, who took over last May pending the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. He faces multiple corruption allegations and has very low approval rating (only 10% of Brazilians support his government, according to a recent poll).

“The ruralist caucus is exceptionally articulate and organized and will continue to be very powerful as long as Brazil relies on commodity production to grow and/or to balance its external accounts. There is nothing wrong about that, as it is healthy for ruralists to be represented in the public dialogue,” sociologist and political commentator Celso Rocha de Barros told Climate Home in an e-mail.

“In the current situation, the risk is that the balance of power has shifted very sharply to the right. The Temer government is full-blooded conservative. We run the risk of watching the ruralist agenda, which deserves to be debated, implemented without being confronted, as the left is now too weak: it lost the Executive, it’s isolated in the Legislative and has not yet found a new voice in public debate,” said Barros.

Disputes over indigenous territory are just part of the farming lobby’s campaign against land use restrictions. On 21 December, Temer ratified a provisional amnesty on dozens of farmers illegally occupying 305,000 hectares in the National Forest of Jamanxim, in the Amazon state of Pará.

Lawmakers from the beef caucus are also under negotiation with the federal government to reduce protection across 10,763 sq km (half the size of Wales) of land in the state of Amazonas.

In both cases, the protected areas are next to federal roads, which facilitate illegal logging and the replacement of the forest by pasture.

Indigenous land rights fundamental to climate safety – Lord Stern

Deforestation in the Amazon rose 29% from August 2015 to July 2016, according to government-run Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) despite the country’s biggest recession in history. That equates to a loss of 7,989 sq km of forest.

For Santilli, now an adviser for environmental NGO Instituto Socioambiental, Brazil is moving away from its climate pledge to reduce emissions 37% by 2025 compared with 2005 figures. About two thirds of the country’s carbon emissions come from deforestation.

“When our goal was established, it was very modest, especially for 2025, as it is very close to emission levels Brazil had already reached in 2012. Since then, however, we are moving away from our goal due to the increase of deforestation,” said Santilli in a phone interview.

“What is at stake in Brazil is the dispute over what’s left of the territory. The problem is not the Indians or biodiversity… It’s a struggle for the land, and the negative signs can be seen in all the policies related to that.”

The post “Beef caucus” takes over indigenous policies in Brazil appeared first on Climate Home News.

Since revolution in the region started to wind down in the 1980s, there has been an internationally celebrated trend to create large conservation areas. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of forest have been placed within borders designed to protect them.

But according to a report released at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Mexico on Thursday, some of those areas have placed restrictions on the tribes who made their living in the forest through traditional, and what they say are sustainable, practices.

“The protected areas have had a terrible impact on our people,” said Norvin Golf, the president of a coalition of Miskito tribes from Honduras. “And when you look at the maps you can see it. It is clear that on lands that we manage, the forests are standing, and where there are protected areas and no people, there is invasion and destruction.

“By not recognising the indigenous peoples as owners of the protected areas, the government opens our territories to an invasion of people seeking to expropriate the land, destroy the forests, and turn our ancestral home into a source of money.”

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Andrew Davis, who produced the report for the Primsa Foundation, said: “Commitments to indigenous peoples look good on paper, but when you travel to the protected areas in some countries, you see government agencies using the threat of arrest and sometimes even intimidation to prevent indigenous peoples from harvesting and using resources on lands they have been conserving for hundreds of years.”

In October, a study compared the health of forests in South America under indigenous management and those where tenure had not been granted. It found significantly decreased rates of deforestation.

“Indigenous people living in that area are really interested in keeping those areas well,” said Gustavo Sánchez, president of an umbrella organisation for indigenous and peasant groups in Mexico. “Because they are living there, they are living from products they get from the forests. The government don’t have the resources to make sure that this happens.”

A map, also released on Thursday, from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that indigenous communities in central America occupy an area of 282,000 sq km: five times the land area of Costa Rica.

“You cannot talk about conservation without speaking of indigenous peoples and their role as the guardians of our most delicate lands and waters,” said IUCN regional director Grethel Aguilar. “Where indigenous people live, you will find the best preserved natural resources. They depend on those natural resources to survive, and the rest of society depends on their role in safeguarding those resources for the wellbeing of us all.”

Mesoamerica, the cultural region spanning from central Mexico to Honduras, outperforms any other region when it comes to the number of tribes granted land tenure. This is partly because of the historical resilience of tribes in these areas, where they maintain a higher level of political clout than indigenous peoples elsewhere.

In many areas, this higher level of land tenure has translated into better access and protection. Victor Lopez, head of the Guatemalan Community Forestry Association, said the Maya Biosphere Reserve was an excellent example of the parallel paths of between cultural and environmental heritage.

But he said there were other cases in which conservation had compounded dispossession. He highlighted the Semuq Champey national monument, where thousands of tourists come to experience the wonder of the limestone structures along the Cahabón River – sacred to the local people.

Indigenous land rights fundamental to climate safety – Lord Stern

Yhose traditional owners are barred from even entering the park and visiting their own religious sites, he said. Instead they watch the tourists as they file through. Local protests have lead to violence and police repression.

These conflicts are partly a historical legacy, Davis’ report found. Many of the reserves were created before the link between indigenous rights and conservation was established in the mainstream. But they are also the result of continuing failure on behalf of governments to consult, said Lopez.

“I cannot say that conservation has been successful [in general]. At these times that governments give back the rights to local people, it has been successful. But we have many conflicts around the country,” he said. “I am convinced that the main cause of that is the policy of creating in a very vertical and centralised way the protected areas without proper consultation and respectful involvement of local people, both indigenous and multicultural people.”

The Mexican, Guatemalan and Honduran governments did not respond to requests for comment.

Map of Central America. Indigenous land marked in red. Source: IUCN

Sánchez also said that there were many successful examples of integration between protected areas and indigenous people in Mexico. But that there were troubling examples of landowners being shut out. This includes the famed Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, where the migratory insects overwinter.

The report said that local communities in that area had been placed under tight restrictions and disqualified from their traditional practices of selective logging and are instead directed what crops to farm.

“The problem is that when indigenous people’s rights are taken away from the land that they are preserving and protecting they lose interest in protecting and conserving those areas. So you lose control of those areas of forest and the amount of personnel that the government has to protect those areas is not enough,” said Sánchez.

This gap in stewardship allows illegal loggers to operate, he said. Deforestation in the reserve tripled in recent years.

“By excluding us, the government allows the invasion of the lands, and the theft of the biodiversity they want to protect,” said Golf.

The post Conservation zones exclude indigenous people, drive deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.

That provision is being put to the test in North America, where indigenous communities fiercely oppose oil pipelines and a major hydropower dam.

Kevin Hart, regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations – an organisation representing 900,000 Canadians, has come straight from Standing Rock to UN climate talks in Marrakech.

“I was there as an international observer representing 600 nations. I went down to give my support to my relatives in Standing Rock,” he told Climate Home. “You know, I witnessed firsthand women being attacked by security forces with dogs, goons hired by Dakota Access pipeline.”

Standing Rock, US has been the site of fierce clashes over a US$3.8 billion oil pipeline. On one side, the native Sioux tribe and environmentalists are trying to block construction, fearing its impacts on the Missouri river and contribution to climate change. On the other, security forces defend the property rights of developer Energy Access Partners, which has permits for the project.

To Hart, it invoked a dark period of human history. “When arrests were made, our people were put in dog kennels in the Morgan country sheriff’s department,” he recalled. “They had numbers written on their arms… Back in the second world war, we had another regime do that to another group of people.”

Lord Stern: Indigenous land rights are fundamental to climate safety

Another leader from the Assembly, Francois Paulette, feels the same anxiety. He lives about 200 miles downstream from Alberta’s tar sands, where crude oil is to be extracted and taken to refineries in the US Gulf Coast under the Keystone XL pipeline project.

The Keystone Pipeline XL project was halted by US President Barack Obama, who refused to grant the application of TransCanada, the company behind the project. His successor Donald Trump, however, has promised to un-block fossil fuel projects.

Paulette said the wastewater discharged can seep into the Athabasca river, which flows into their territory. This is what happened with other existing pipeline projects, he claimed: “That river is so polluted, people are dying from cancer, people cannot eat fish.”

Francois Paulette is in Marrakech to register his opposition to oil and hydropower projects (Pic: Purple Romero)

It is not just oil pipelines that concern Paulette, either.

In August, the Canadian government approved two permits for the construction of the Site-C dam, which will flood the Peace River valley territory, a major fishing and hunting site for the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations.

Paulette maintains that prime minister Justin Trudeau, like his predecessor Stephen Harper who approved the Keystone Pipeline XL project, did not consult indigenous people before giving the Site-C dam the green light.  “He approved it. He approved Site C. He said he’s gonna talk to us, he did not,” said Paulette.

The indigenous leader said this raised questions on the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement as a tool for upholding human rights. “The Paris Agreement is very supportive, but on the ground, it’s another story.”

Trudeau: Canada to set national carbon tax from 2018

The Trudeau government is keen to show respect for indigenous rights as part of its commitment to implement the Paris Agreement, which it ratified in October.

In her speech at the high-level segment of the UN climate talks, Canada environmental minister Catherine Mckenna introduced Maatalii Okalik, a young leader of the Inuit people, to the world.

“With your continued leadership that will define our future on climate action, I am hopeful that it is done in cooperation with indigenous peoples, in platforms, and with respect to our rights, which ultimately support indigenous self-determination,” Okalik told delegates.

Mckenna would later say that Canada was already doing this: “At home, officials from all levels of Canadian government are working with indigenous peoples, business leaders, youth and environmental organizations, and all citizens to develop a Canadian framework for clean growth and climate change.”

Paulette said this pronouncement should result in Canada putting its foot down against oil pipeline projects and the Site-C dam.

“We have to tell them if Canada is gonna be leading, they can’t extend anymore these hydro dams, projects using the tar sands.”

Hart remains hopeful that Trudeau will make good on his word that he will nix economic activities that harm the environment and the tribal communities. “He indicated that his most important relationship is with us First Nations.”

In the next steps that will be taken by the Canadian government, they should remember two things, said Hart: “When you make a decision you always, have to think of the 7seven generations,” and that “no means no”.

The post Indigenous leaders call on Canada’s Trudeau to uphold Paris deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The world must become “zero net carbon” by 2070-80 if it wants to stay within the 2C limit set by the Paris climate agreement, said Stern, or “much earlier for 1.5C”. But some industries – including aviation – are expected to continue emitting carbon late into the century.

“If there are going to be some that are [carbon] positive,” Stern told an audience at a World Resources Institute (WRI) event in Washington, DC, “there have got to be some that are negative and it’s the forests and the grasslands that are the big potential source there.”

Stern was speaking on Friday at the launch of a WRI study that found that securing indigenous land tenure in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia could avoid the release of an estimated 42.8–59.7 Mt CO2 per year through avoided deforestation. This is equivalent to taking between 9 and 12.6m cars off the road.

Source: WRI

When indigenous land rights are recognised, there is plenty of evidence that the rate of deforestation goes down, which means the forests continue locking in carbon.

“With secure tenure, indigenous people have a clear economic incentive to better manage their forests,” said study author Helen Ding, an environmental economist at WRI.

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Communities have a legal claim on one eighth of the world’s forests. “The consequences of all this for deforestation, for greenhouse gases and so on, is also profound,” said Stern, who authored the pivotal Stern Review on climate change for the UK government in 2006.

“The role of forests in climate mitigation is vastly under-appreciated, even by most climate experts,” said Daniel Zarin, director of programmes at the Climate and Land Use Alliance at the same event. “Other than the oceans, there are no other carbon capture and storage technologies that are nearly as cost-effective as forests.”

With the leaders of the G20 and the governor of the Bank of England pushing for great investment in green projects in recent weeks, Stern said “secure land rights, whether they be of indigenous people or anybody else, is fundamental to investment”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zabMrNAAres

He said that securing certain forest areas could be considered as part of a nation’s flood protection infrastructure.

“If you look after the lands up in the hills then that holds the water and is essentially flood control for further down. If you built channels, you’d count that as your infrastructure… But if something is doing it further up the hill because you manage it better, it’s actually very reasonable to call that natural infrastructure,” he said.

The economic benefits accrued by avoided emissions and the value associated with keeping forests intact was estimated at a whopping US$523 billion–1.165 trillion in Brazil over the next 20 years. In Bolivia the savings could be $54–119 billion and $123–277 billion in Colombia.

That is based on the social cost of carbon used by the US government, of $41 a tonne. Stern said it was a conservative figure and the actual value of avoiding dangerous climate change was likely to be higher.

The argument went beyond the economy and the environment, Stern added. Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and across the world are being dispossessed by development. In some cases, their rights are being considered. A massive dam project in the Brazilian Amazon was suspended in April over concerns about the impact on local tribes.

“We are talking about justice here, we ought to be very clear about that… If you haven’t got those rights, you’re much more vulnerable to outsiders… If you’re vulnerable to outsiders it’s theft. Its solid rights that protect you against that.”

The post Indigenous land rights fundamental to climate safety – Lord Stern appeared first on Climate Home News.

An event at COP21 on food security and adaptation to climate change for indigenous peoples. Few have gained accreditation to the Paris climate talks (credit: IISD reporting services)

By Alex Pashley in Paris 

On the cold tarmac of the UN tent city, indigenous dress clashed with a blur of business attire as Amazonian Indians milled around a mock Eiffel Tower.

With facial markings and feather headdresses, these were some of the few to gain accreditation to a climate summit on Paris’ heavily-policed margins.

They had travelled thousands of miles to have their voices heard.

Negotiators from 195 nations are grappling to clinch a new global climate agreement by the end of next week.

But the COP21, as it is known in UN lingo, is not theirs.

“It’s not an indigenous peoples meeting,” Abdon Nadaban, a leader from north Sumatra in Indonesia told me.

“We come here because we want the governments to discuss our problems.”

On Tuesday’s ‘Forests Day’, wealthy donor governments pledged cash to help counter tree-cutting. Germany, Norway and the UK aim to mobilise US$5 billion over the next five years and start a partnership with Colombia. More announcements are expected this fortnight.

The heir to the British throne backed a statement by 17 leaders recognising the “essential role of forests” for climate and development. Land titling of ancestral lands was the best weapon to stop deforestation, Prince Charles said.

More than a billion people depend directly on forests for their livelihoods. Each year, approximately 12 million hectares of forest are destroyed, an area the size of Nicaragua or North Korea.

Outside the main conference centre, groups from Southeast Asia and First Nations from Canada sat under hot lamps in the Indigenous Pavilion.

Sarayaku indigenous leaders promoting their vision of Living Forests at #COP21 #KeepItInTheGround #IndigenousRising pic.twitter.com/y71nyg5tsk

— Andrew E. Miller (@AmazonMiller) December 1, 2015

UN top representatives such as former Irish president Mary Robinson and its special rapporteur for indigenous affairs celebrated them as “guardians of the forest”. Canada’s new environment minister made a quick visit, then scarpered.

The problems were clear, but the solutions far harder.

As attendees spilled out of the wooden construction, Tashka Yawanawa from a community in the Brazilian Amazon told me he had come to highlight his community’s “life plan”.

“Planning into the future is preparing something to leave the new generation,” he said wearing a headdress of two foot-long exotic feathers. “Indigenous people were the first to protect the forest before people start to think about ecology.”

Across the ‘Climate Generation Area’, the Kichwa people of Sarayaku gave proposals for the protection of living forests in a new agreement.

Backed by advocacy group Amazon Watch, they have been locked in a legal fight with the Ecuadorian government over oil drilling in their territories.

Group  founder Atossa Soltani told me negotiations dealt in “siloed solutions” in tackling climate change rather than one picture.

“Indigenous peoples both know the traditional ways of living with the forest and have wisdom for humanity about how we relate to nature and how we should respect nature and see ourselves as part of the web of life,” she said.”That message is not here.”

One prominent way to tackle deforestation is an initiative that pays communities to keep trees in the ground and earn money from the carbon they suck from the atmosphere.

But many are wary of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of forests (REDD+) scheme.

Juan Antonio Correa, a Chilean activist had come to attend a panel session opposing REDD+. Tricksters had duped indigenous groups into signing countries they didn’t understand, he said – and the environment is not a commodity to be bought and sold.

Nor did he feel involved in the COP21.

“We know what the Paris agreement will resolve is contradictory against our rights. We don’t want exploitation. We want true protection and the true solution to climate change, but nobody has asked the indigenous groups.”

Previous events in Lima, Peru and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil made for a stronger turn-out of forest peoples of the Amazon. In Paris, they were relatively isolated.

Even the UN Development Programme’s Equator Prize, which celebrates indigenous community initiatives on climate, reportedly failed to gain access for the majority of its winners into the confines of COP21.

If there was a metaphor, this was it.

“Do you know that the majority of indigenous leaders who will receive #EquatorPrize2015 @UNDP have been denied accreditations @COP21@UNFCCC”

— Bianca Jagger (@BiancaJagger) December 2, 2015

The post On forests, the UN and indigenous people are worlds apart appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Sophie Yeo

By Sophie Yeo

Living on artificial floating islands on Lake Titicaca, Peru’s Uros people lead simple lives of fishing and craftsmanship.

Some say that this indigenous race dates back some 3,700 years to when the central Andes were first settled.

Forced onto the islands of totora reeds by colonising Incas, they have since spent their days rebuilding and replacing the spongy foundations of their homes.

Separated from the mainland, the Uros people have retained many of the habits of their ancestors. But when it came to solar technology, they were early adopters.

Victor Vilca, who lives on Uros Khantati, one of more than 50 floating islands in the lake, says that the islanders started using solar panels to provide electricity around 25 years ago.

He has now installed six solar panels on his own island, where he lives with his wife, children and three other families.

And the inhabitants of the other islands have also turned to the technology, he says.

While the use of solar panels around the world has boomed in the past two decades, the sun in Peru is still only responsible for around 0.02% of domestic energy supply, according to the International Energy Agency.

This could change. Earlier this year the government issued plans for 500,000 new panels in remote areas, part of a strategy to boost electrification from 90 to 95% in rural areas.

Vulnerable Peru

Vilca spoke to RTCC one week after the UN’s climate conference had concluded in Lima, putting Peru’s own carbon footprint – and its vulnerabilities – into the spotlight.

Lake Titicaca, which at over 12,000 feet is the world’s highest navigable lake, is already vulnerable to climate change.

In 2009, the Lake Titicaca authorities said that the lake was at its lowest level since 1949 due to evaporation caused by global warming.

Diminished rainfall and a rise in solar radiation had led to four years of critically low water levels were threatening fish spawning and water levels, they said.

A 2010 academic paper suggested that Lake Titicaca could shrink by as much as 85% if temperatures rise more than 2C. This is the limit set by world governments, but current emission rates mean this will be far exceeded by the end of the century.

Images from NASA satellites illustrate that the edges of the lake are already receding. This spells trouble for the 2.6 million people who depend on the lake for sustenance through irrigation and fishing.

Co-benefits

But the popularity of the technology among some of Peru’s remotest communities illustrates how clean energy has advantages beyond a mere replacement for fossil fuels.

The incentive for Peru’s remote islanders to use solar power is less about reducing their negligible greenhouse gas emissions, and more about the co-benefits that they offer.

Solar panel catches the last of the light at dusk on Uros Khantati (Pic: Sophie Yeo)

As the Uros islands are only accessible by boat, transporting barrels of diesel or coal to be ignited on highly flammable islands of dried reeds was never a practical solution to the islanders’ energy requirements.

Before solar power become possible, islanders relied on candles for light, says Vilca.

Now each house on his island has an electric bulb, and occupants are able to charge their mobile phones.

These modern amenities make a night on the island more attractive for Peru’s plugged-in visitors, keen to get a glimpse at the unusual sight of these reed homes bobbing on top of the lake.

With 80% of the islanders now catering for tourists, it has become key to sustaining the lives and culture of these fragile communities.

The post Peru’s indigenous Uros people turn to solar power appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mama Aleta in the forest of West Timor
(Pic: Goldman Environmental Prize)

By Megan Darby

When the government of West Timor gave mining companies permits to exploit resources in the forest, one woman was determined to stop them.

Aleta Baun endured violence and threats in her efforts to drive out miners. She was ultimately successful and won a Goldman Environmental Prize.

Now Mama Aleta, as she is known, sees an opportunity to use UN funding to protect the forest, which helps reduce the impact of climate change. But she is concerned the government that handed out mining permits might not use that money wisely.

Mama Aleta speaks through an interpreter from Bali, where grassroots women and environmental activists gathered for a conference this week.

Organised by the International Network of Women’s Funds and the Greengrants Alliance Fund, the summit aimed to give women community leaders a voice on climate change.

With a budget of just over US$6 million a year, the Greengrants Alliance Fund operates at a much smaller scale to development banks and UN green funds.

Yet by empowering activists like Mama Aleta, who directly confront big business, it can have a major impact on the economy and the environment.

Mama Aleta has been resisting forest destruction for nearly 20 years.

She is from the indigenous Mollo people, who believe plants have souls and must be protected.

The forests also provide natural dyes that the Mollo people use in their traditional weaving.

Mining started across the Indonesian island of Timor in the 1980s, leading to deforestation, water pollution and landslides.

Villagers were not consulted on these developments.

In 1996, when the companies moved in with plans to quarry marble from the Mollo’s sacred mountain, Mama Aleta decided she had had enough.

She organised a protest that culminated in a year-long camp at the marble site.

Some 150 women from the community took looms to the mine’s entrance, so they could continue their traditional weaving as they demonstrated.

It was a peaceful protest that got an aggressive response.

“I was terrorised, I was beaten up,” says Mama Aleta. “I had to flee from my house, because it was no longer safe. I had to be separated from my husband and children.”

She filed a police report but it was not taken up. “They said the struggle of these people is against development. The government feels like we are at fault.”

In 2007, after a long struggle, four mines in the area closed for good.

Attention turns to building up the community’s economic power in sustainable ways, so it can resist the lure of mining jobs.

REDD

The UN has a programme called REDD to prevent deforestation and the carbon emissions that go with it. It stands for ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’.

The idea is to pay developing countries to preserve their forests. That removes the temptation to let business interests clear the trees for farming or mining.

It can also be a cost-effective way to mitigate climate change.

However, the programme has struggled to raise funds amid concerns over the poor governance records of some would-be recipients.

The recipients need to be able to monitor huge areas of trees and show they are effectively preventing damage.

It is a controversial issue among indigenous forest communities, too. Some are concerned REDD will hand control of their lands to outsiders.

Mama Aleta’s community has started planting trees to try and rehabilitate the forest.

She is seeking to raise money for the Mollo people to map their lands and assert their rights.

This could put them in a position to receive REDD funding, but only if the UN is prepared to look beyond the government.

“REDD can be an opportunity for the community to rehabilitate the forest that was damaged,” says Mama Aleta.

“But if the government keeps giving permits to other commercial activities then the solution is not through them.”

Women community leaders compare strategies at a conference in Bali
(Pic: Global Greengrants Fund)

The UN and grassroots movements are two worlds that rarely collide.

Terry Odendahl, executive director at Global Greengrants Fund, perceives the UN attitude as “big problems need big solutions”.

In contrast, she says many of the solutions to climate change are local solutions, both in adaptation and mitigation.

“So much money from the UN is flowing to the larger organisations and in East Africa, say, you see a series of villages where women are in charge of the agriculture,” says Odendahl.

“They are working with new forms of irrigation and at the same time they have got solar panels on their thatched roofs.”

Working with women’s groups, Odendahl wants to give grassroots leaders a greater voice on climate change.

The UN is backing efforts to raise US$15 billion as starting capital for the Green Climate Fund.

Odendahl thinks “some of that money could come our way”.

If not, she adds, “that money is going to flow into government and yet the indigenous people, who have done a lot of work stewarding [the environment], are less likely to get it”.

Mama Aleta has shown what can be achieved on a minimal budget by a few resolute women.

Any UN strategy that ignores the power of the grassroots is missing a trick.

The post Meet the weaver who stopped miners destroying her forest appeared first on Climate Home News.

A Cakchiquel family in the hamlet of Patzutzun, Guatemala (Pic: UN Photo)

By Alejandro Argumedo

Indigenous people are one of the most vulnerable groups to the impacts of climate change.

They stand to lose so much because, as well as relying on the natural environment and biodiversity for their livelihoods (often in fragile ecosystems), their entire worldview or ‘cosmo-vision’ is intertwined with and based on complex interactions with nature and the environment.

Indigenous people are also made vulnerable by their widespread and continuing neglect and marginalisation in national, regional and international climate change policy. Unfortunately, this state of affairs is no surprise; the false but prevalent portrayal of indigenous peoples as homogenous, backwards and vulnerable is a product of colonialism.

But it should not be assumed that because indigenous groups are vulnerable to the effects of climate change that they are vulnerable overall. The experiences of various indigenous peoples’ initiatives shows that indigenous communities posses important resilience which should not be neglected.

Furthermore, if policy responses are to be effective, including at the UN climate talks, participation of these communities and the integration of their knowledge, priorities and worldview is critical.

Changing practices

Climate change is a global problem but its impacts are local and vary significantly by location. Indigenous people have been adapting to changes in the environment for centuries, and have become highly attuned to changes in their own landscape.

As a result, indigenous communities have developed a number of strategies and methods with which to adapt to change and which provide resilience.

Assessments conducted by the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative (IPCCA) on every continent, and representing every major type of ecosystem, have demonstrated that many of these adaptations are already underway as the climate changes.

These include: diversifying and supplementing natural resources, altering and modifying key species and biodiversity, shifting timing cycles and calendars, adjusting locations, and collective resource management, among others.

Yet these skills and knowledge are too often neglected and overlooked by the broad technical and scientific approaches of the climate change policy apparatus, despite the fact that this knowledge provides capacity for community based adaptation.

International policy

Many international groups are already engaging with indigenous communities, effectively or otherwise.

These include the UN climate talks (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and various initiatives by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, United Nations Development Program and United Nations Environment Program.

But participation of indigenous communities within these groups is a major issue, with varied opportunities for them to take part in each.

The UNFCCC has ‘engaged’ with indigenous communities only since 2000, but the level of influence of indigenous people in the process remains minimal. The plight of indigenous people is seldom mentioned in the discussions or publications.

At the last UN conference in Warsaw, the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change statement called for an Indigenous Peoples’ Expert body to be set up. This would contribute to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all subsidiary bodies, activities, mechanisms and programmes.

Also, it called for establishing a technical support unit for indigenous peoples’ issues and an indigenous focal point in the UNFCCC Secretariat, which should be established under the adaptation, technology transfer, capacity building and science programmes.

Finally, it asked for a dedicated fund mechanism for the participation of indigenous people’s organizations in climate policy-making processes and should support mitigation and adaptation activities at ground level.

Such mechanisms would ensure the inclusion of indigenous people’s voices, solutions and knowledge in climate change decision-making at all levels.

Barriers

There are several more intangible barriers that continue to exclude indigenous voices from climate change policy.

These include the marginalisation, exploitation, and cultural imperialism imposed on indigenous communities, often in the name of climate change mitigation or adaptation.

Another issue is the perceived incompatibility between science based policy and indigenous knowledge. Science based policy typically has problems understanding the qualitative, rich and place-specific outputs from indigenous communities.

More than this, for indigenous communities, top-down technology-based approaches to climate change are not only inadequate but counterproductive.

These lessons are a few of the cornerstones of our forthcoming Synthesis Report, based on the IPCCA’s worldwide local assessments of indigenous communities and climate change. This will be presented at the UN’s next climate conference in Lima.

Momentum

There has never been a more opportune time to discuss this issue at an international level.

In the last few years, the push for the integration of indigenous people and knowledge in the climate change landscape has gained pace.

But critically there has still been very little practical action to involve indigenous communities in coming up with climate change solutions that link evidence on the ground to policy development in the UNFCCC.

Therefore, the IPCCA proposes that existing best practices in indigenous peoples participation should be applied, such as those exercised by the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has defined problems and identified solutions from a wide variety of viewpoints, including those of indigenous peoples. This has increased understanding of the interlinked problems facing biodiversity and society, including indigenous human rights.

This should open a process for a full and effective participation of indigenous peoples in all processes at the UN climate talks. Openness to conflicting claims and views would increase the credibility of an already discredited UN Convention.

Now is the time for the climate change community to rally behind this cause.

Alejandro Argumedo is founder of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative, and associate director of ANDES, a Cuzco-based organization working to protect and develop indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage.

The post Why are indigenous people sidelined at UN climate talks? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Indigenous populations such as the Tukano live on parts of the Upper Rio Negro (Pic: Flickr/dany13)

By Fabíola Ortiz in Rio de Janeiro

Indigenous communities in Brazil may be the solution for preserving the Amazon rainforests and avoiding climate change, according to a new report.

“Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change: How Strengthening Community Forest Rights Mitigates Climate Change” was launched jointly by World Resources Institute (WRI) and Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) last week.

It says indigenous territories (ITs) in Brazil stand as a successful model for a deforestation resistance.

The study reveals that strengthening community forest rights is a low cost strategy to preserve at least 37 billion tonnes of carbon “safely stored” around the world.

It is, according to Andy White, president of the RRI and one of the leading experts on this topic, an effective policy approach to mitigate global climate change through carbon sequestration.

“The most important finding is that recognition of rights is an effective strategy to reduce emissions,” White tells RTCC.

“Without the indigenous people protection of the forest, climate change will get much worse. Communities are already conserving about a third of forest in tropical countries.”

Communities hold legal rights to more than 500 million hectares of forests globally, about one eighth of the world’s total.

The report warns that 13 million hectares of forest are cleared every year at a rate of 50 soccer fields a minute.

Using new high-resolution mapping data, the study quantified the amount of carbon stored in forests managed by indigenous and traditional communities in 14 tropical forest nations, including Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia and Peru.

The WRI’s online mapping tool shows areas where Amazon forest has recently been cleared (red)

It is by far the most rigorous analysis of this question, argued the leading expert.

“When we started the study our question was what type of forest ownership is best for the climate: government, private or community owned? We were trying to understand from the climate perspective which type of ownership would be the best performer,” White says.

For White, most of the tropical forest is in the Amazon, Africa and Asia, but a great proportion of the deforestation worldwide takes place in Latin America.

“Compared to some other options like establishing carbon market, shutting down all cars and trucks, options to reduce emissions are most costly than the recognition of a community rights,” he said.

Brazil is home to some of the most carbon-rich forests in the world, with about 63 billion tonnes of carbon locked in.

The Amazon region alone  holds 10% of the carbon stored in all land ecosystems: “communities are more than 10 times effective than government in stopping deforestation,” he says.

Indigenous territories

Brazil’s Indigenous Territories (ITs) play a significant role in keeping C02 emissions from the atmosphere, reveals the report.

Legal rights could contribute to preventing 27.2 million hectares of deforestation by 2050 in this country. That is 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided.

From 1980 to 2007, about 300 ITs were legally recognized. According to the latest national census from 2010, the indigenous population in the country accounts for almost 900,000 people, divided in 305 different ethnic groups speaking over 270 languages.

Most of the indigenous people live in the countryside spread in the 505 ITs, identified by the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). The ITs in Brazil represent 12.5% of national territory – 196,700 hectares with more than 500 thousand Indians living in the area.

“They prevent logging, roads, mining and other forces that will destroy the forest. In many places in the world, governments are still promoting deforestation, industrial logging, clearing for soy, beans and palm oil,” White says.

“It is very clear that when indigenous people own the forest they can protect it. From the climate perspective, community and indigenous ownerships are the right solution for the climate.”

Slow pace of rights recognition

According to White,  the ITs are a “tremendous model of success” by ensuring that over a 100 million hectares of forest are protected. Unfortunately, in the last few years President Dilma Rousseff’s administration has been “weakening” the historical support for communities as well as slowing down the recognition of those territories.

And White is critical of the official mapping and registration process, which he says has proved slow.

From 2000 to 2012, WRI deforestation analysis for the Brazilian Amazon, showed that forest loss was only 0.6% inside Indigenous Territories compared with 7% outside. Community forests in the Amazon tend to be carbon-rich containing 36% more carbon per hectare than areas of the Brazilian Amazon outside ITs.

Although the country is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases from deforestation in the world, it seems increasingly clear that the deforestation emissions are not coming from community lands.

The study also discloses that those traditional communities are more effective in resisting threats. However sometimes they are not able to handle the enormous pressure, especially from mining, industrial logging and infrastructure projects like building of roads, dams and pipelines.

For the representative of the RRI, Brazil has two challenges nowadays: one stands for concluding the demarcation of indigenous lands and the other one is to ensure the full respect of community rights.

Tukano people

The Tukano are 6,000 people living in the border with Colombia and Venezuela spread in five different ITs on the upper stream of the Rio Negro river.

The Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN), is aimed at developing a sustainable program for their people.

“Without the land we Indians do not exist. The forest is connected to us and we are connected to the land. The forest only survives because we indigenous live there. As soon as we disappear, there will be no more forest.

“We won’t have a standing forest because of humanity’s greed, worried only about profits and progress,” says Maximiliano Correa Menezes, also known as Max Tukano, the general coordinator of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB).

Tukano belongs to the Alto Rio Negro IT, a 7,9 million hectares piece of land that gathers a population of 40,000 people divided into 23 ethnic groups (like Tukano, Wanana, Karapanã, Baré, Barasána, Arapáso) living in 700 tribes.

The Tukano live in the northwestern Amazon, along the Vaupés River and the surrounding area (Pic: indiostukanos.blogspot.com)

He tells RTCC that the importance of their rights recognition is related to their cultural past traditions preservation as well as to their healing treatment with the use of medicinal herbs.

“Indigenous lands should be recognized so as the Indians may survive. As long as there are indigenous people, the forests will be standing up. Land is very sacred, we cannot even trade or exchange it. We traditionally do not devastate we only maintain food production for our subsistence.”

One day, warns Tukano, the indigenous peoples will not be able to withstand political pressure from the Brazilian government that has agribusiness as their policy driven. “We want to build partnerships”, he adds.

Since the 90’s, the Tukano as a member of FOIRN joined the Climate Alliance based in Austria that has committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The aim among the European countries is to cut CO2 emissions by 10% every 5 years.

The important milestone of halving per capita emissions (baseline year 1990) should be achieved at the latest in 2030.

In the long-term, the alliance aims to cut 2.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions per capita and year by energy saving, energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources.

Government delegations around the world are starting to prepare their strategies for the COP20 meeting in Lima, Peru, to be held in December and are now looking for effective and low cost policies.

The RRI’s White recommends that all delegations should consider this as a matter of urgency.

This is a “low cost proven option as a priority to reduce emissions in their own countries”, he says.

The post Brazil’s indigenous tribes: The low cost solution to climate change? appeared first on Climate Home News.

A Kyrgyz family in front of their yurt in the Tchonkymyn Valley in the Tien Shan Mountains. (Pic: UN Photo/F Charton)

By Sophie Yeo

A network of 25 indigenous communities from 10 countries has come together to share traditional knowledge on how to adapt to climate change.

Countries in the network include China, Peru, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea.

Seed sharing between the groups will ensure that farmers grow crops that are resilient and diverse enough to withstand major damage in the face of unusual weather.

“We are from different communities but we have similar problems relating to climate change,” said Akylbek Kasymov, an economist at Kyrgyz National Agrarian University, and leader of the Kyrgyz delegation at a workshop for indigenous people in Bhutan.

The International Network of Mountain Indigenous People was created by communities from mountainous regions, speaking 22 languages between them, to swap ideas, information, and even seeds, so they can be resilient in the face of a changing climate.

These mountainous regions will face similar problems as the impacts of climate change become more severe, threatening the livelihoods and traditions of their indigenous communities.

These problems include melting glaciers, changes in rainfall patters, failing crops and more pests and diseases.

For instance, in Papua New Guinea, agriculture is the largest economic activity, and its natural climate means that most of its crops are fed by the rain.

At a recent meeting in Bhutan, Papuan farmers highlighted how changing rainfall patterns mean that the islanders have a growing need for irrigation to keep their crops alive. Local knowledge of this system is lacking. Through the network, indigenous communities will be able to help each other by sharing this kind of information.

According to the UN’s science report from the IPCC, indigenous knowledge can be a valuable asset in helping small farmers figure out how to adapt to climate change.  It also warns that the impacts of warming increase with altitude, putting mountainous communities at particular risk.

This means that these traditions need to be preserved as well as shared, says Kasymov, who says that some local indigenous knowledge was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when large-scale immigration interrupted the transmission of information between old and young generations.

“Kyrgyz people, our parents, they somehow lived in harmony with nature,” he said. “Farmers and custodians of traditional knowledge, they have very rich experience even now.”

At the workshop in Bhutan, which took place last month, indigenous communities signed a Bhutan Declaration, calling on governments to support adaptation based on traditional knowledge, since “The survival of our knowledge systems is critical for the survival of humanity.”

The next meeting is scheduled to take place next year in Taiwan, around six months before the UN signs a global climate change treaty in Paris.

The post India and China farmers back new climate adaptation alliance appeared first on Climate Home News.

Source: World Bank Photo Collection

By Alex Kirby

You don’t have to be a sophisticated scientist equipped with all the latest gizmos in order to work out just how effective a particular forest is as a carbon sink, a critical way of soaking up greenhouse gases.

The job, researchers believe, can be done just as accurately by the people who live in the forests, most of whom probably have neither modern instruments nor scientific training.

And the forests themselves will probably gain as well, because the local people will have more reason to feel they are buying into the trees’ conservation and so will have an incentive to protect them and work with conservationists from outside the forests.

The study, ‘Community Monitoring for REDD+: International Promises and Field Realities’, was published in a special issue of the journal Ecology and Society and was carried out by researchers at the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and colleagues from Europe and south-east Asia.

It is on the agenda at the Oslo Redd Exchange, which aims to improve the workings of the UN’s Redd+ programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

Promise – and reality

The team studied some of south-east Asia’s most complex, carbon-rich forests: lowland forest in Indonesia, mountain rainforest in China and monsoon forest in Laos and Vietnam.

They report that they found that local communities – using simple tools like ropes and sticks – could produce forest carbon data on a par with the results obtained by professional foresters using high-tech devices.

The UN says its Redd+ projects must ensure local communities’ “full and effective participation.” But the study found that nearly half of official Redd+ projects, which depend on the accurate measurement of carbon stored in the forests, do not engage communities in this data gathering.

Finn Danielsen, the study’s lead author and senior ecologist at the Nordic Foundation for Environment and Development in Copenhagen, Denmark, says: “Saving the world’s forests requires us to close the massive gulf between international promises and realities on the ground.

“Our research shows that if more Redd+ projects were to include community monitoring, we would see a more just global effort to fight climate change that meaningfully incorporates insight from people who depend on forests for everything from their incomes to their food – and are eager to protect these precious natural resources as a result.”

Similarities ‘striking’

To establish whether forest dwellers could provide accurate monitoring of above-ground forest carbon stocks, the researchers trained community members in simple measuring techniques and sent them to 289 forest plots to measure the trees’ number, girth and biomass per hectare. They then compared the community measurements with those gathered by professional foresters using handheld computers and other elaborate aids.

The community monitoring was done with some basic equipment, apart from GPS devices: measuring tapes, ropes marked at intervals, paint and pencils.

The researchers say: “The results showed strikingly similar results between community members and professional foresters across countries and forest types.

“This corroborates a small but growing body of research suggesting that, when armed with the simplest of techniques and equipment, community members with limited education can accurately monitor forest biomass – previously thought to be the domain of highly-trained professionals.” They say the community data also met the standards of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Subekti Rahayu, an analyst at ICRAF who conducted fieldwork for the study, says: “We’re convinced that engaging communities is ultimately the most cost-effective approach. The small extra cost would be largely offset by its benefits to both local people – who would earn wages and gain training from these activities – and larger global efforts to address climate change.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network. 

The post Indigenous people key to combating rainforest destruction appeared first on Climate Home News.

Jody Williams (Pic: Cantabria Campus Nobel)

By Sophie Yeo

The story of the slowly eroding cultures of those on the frontline of climate change is often tucked away behind an Armageddon-like narrative of extreme weather and financial disaster.

But for Jody Williams, a 62-year-old Nobel peace prize winner from Vermont, the threat that climate change poses to the way of life of an individual is just as important as the vast changes it is already wreaking upon the environment.

As a long time human rights activist – she points out early on that she has been campaigning now for 32 years – her approach to the climate debate revolves around the chaos that it causes not only to the land itself, but also to those who live on it.

Her most recognised activism with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, is one example of a deeply held “righteous indignation”, as she calls it, at all kinds of injustice.

She is passionate about demilitarization, and the interview, the latest in RTCC’s Climate Leaders’ series, swerves fluidly between discussions of Syria, to US funding of weapons, to climate change, all pieced together by their impact upon the rights of individuals.

Most recently, she has turned her attention to what many environmental activists consider to be their greatest nemesis: the exploitation of the tar sands in Canada.

Last year, Williams travelled along the route of proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would transport tar sands 1,170km from Alberta to British Columbia’s Pacific Coast.

The project poses similar risks as the Keystone XL Pipeline – a 2,000 mile long transportation system designed to take the bitumen mined from the tar sands of  Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas – with the world waiting to see whether President Obama will approve its construction, a decision now said to be likely to happen in 2014.

There are many objections to the Pipeline.

The most widely cited is the highly polluting process of producing the oil, which is three times as greenhouse gas intensive as conventional gasoline.

It would increase US emissions by 30 million tons of carbon dioxide per year if it were to replace the crude oil currently being used by refineries. That is the equivalent of placing an extra 5.6 million cars on the roads.

But, for eight days in October, what Williams chose to focus on a rather less publicised problem associated with tar sands: the disruption to the lives and traditions of the indigenous First Nations people of Alberta.

Jody Williams and team follow the path of the Northern Gateway Pipeline. (Pic: Judy Rand)

Indigenous communities

Last year, between the 8 and 16 October, Williams led a group to Fort McMurray, Alberta, where many of the companies responsible for the tar sands oil extraction are operating, and from then on towards Vancouver.

The aim of the tour was to draw attention to the quieter voices of the tar sands debate: the indigenous people, and particularly the women, who feel their lives and livelihoods are being threatened by the industry in the region.

“We met with indigenous women and non-aboriginal women all along the pipeline route, after we viewed the tar sands themselves – and they’re quite remarkable – and just talked with them about their feelings, their actions, and what steps are they taking,” says Williams.

“It was inspiring and sad and all the things that you can expect from listening to women tribal leaders speak about the devastation to tribal lands, the cancers and illnesses of their children as a result of tar sands exploitation, and the impact on the climate there, which is causing insect infestations of the forests and killing the trees.”

According to the government in Alberta, there are approximately 23,000 Aboriginal people living in Alberta’s oil sand areas, including 18 First Nation tribes, with thousands more living off reserve and off settlement.

“The women were very clear about that their people lived off the land and they were stewards of their land and having the corporations destroying their land was destroying their way of life,” says Williams

“They don’t want to put up with it anymore.”

Government response

Many have claimed that there is a link between the increases in health problems in the region with the tar sands exploitation.

In a small lakeside village of For Chipewyan, for instance, more than 100 out of the 1,200 population have died from cancer. Studies have suggested that this is 43% higher than usual, and that some of the cancers are linked to contaminants.

Villagers blame the toxic pollutants from the mining operations taking place 150 miles upstream.

The government claim that they are working closely with aboriginal people to ensure their land rights are protected and that the production of the tar sands does not pose any health threats to those living in the region.

But Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer and the Royal Society of Canada expert panel have claimed that there is insufficient evidence to link the incidents of rare cancer in Fort Chipewyan to oil sands operations.

Meanwhile, the government also says that they are ensuring that development is balanced “with a respect for Treaty Rights” though the First Nations Consultation Policy on Land Management and Resource Development, which has been reviewed with input from the First Nations, industry and municipalities.

Tar sands exploitation causes environmental degradation (Pic: Flickr / Howl Arts Collective)

Hostage

The government also claims that the industry is providing financial benefits to the region, with 1,700 Aboriginal people employed in permanent oil sands operations jobs in northeast Alberta in 2010.

But all this is doing is holding the native people in economic hostage to the industry, silencing them with the threat of losing their jobs.

There is no choice, claims Crystal Lameman, an activist from the Beaver Lake Cree tribe whom Williams spoke to on the tour: indigenous people must work for the industry or face abject poverty.

“Nobody wants to speak about it because they are scared. They say ‘carry our message but don’t use my name,’” she says.

Crystal Lameman speaking to the delegates. Pic: Nobel Women’s Initiative

But, says Williams, the biggest takeaway for her from the tour was that the villagers are ready to fight. “They will do everything they can to not allow the pipeline to go through their country,” she says.

“They will tie themselves to the bulldozers; they will lie down in the pipe trenches. Some of the native indigenous women, they were very fierce about what they will do to stop the pipeline, and I think that is pretty awesome.

“It is totally remarkable and totally appalling that corporations just want to turn their back on it –‘Who cares? We fat cats are getting rich and we don’t care if a bunch of aboriginals have their whole life disrupted – we’ve been messing with them since time immemorial.’

“Of course, they don’t say it that way, but it’s the mentality of them and us. For the corporations and the one who can influence government power, they don’t care about the individuals.”

Cultural battle

One tribe, the Beaver Lake Cree, are taking their protests one step further, and are taking the Government of Canada to court for over 17,000 treaty violations.

In 1876, the Cree ancestors signed Treaty 6, which guaranteed the right to hunt and fish. The tribe members are claiming that the oil industry is not only compromising this right, but is actively destroying the lands.

But, she says, while cultural heritage is at the heart of the First Nations’ fight against tar sands, it is not an argument that can be used quite so effectively elsewhere.

“Their argument is this is our land and culture – but that’s not an effective argument for people in Vermont, for example, or people in Ottawa or Montreal.

“But I think it takes all of those voices speaking out on the different aspects of the impact of climate change that makes a difference.”

Taking notice

Across regions that have a more advanced ability to cope with the financial devastation of extreme weather events when they do occur, it is the increasing frequency of freak events that are starting to make people take action, she says.

“My husband and I were in London in April, and when we got home to Virginia, we found a tornado had whipped through our town when we were gone, and knocked down our willow tree, knocked down our big fence, and tore a little bit of the roof off. We’ve never had a tornado here,” she recalls.

“So I think it’s harder and harder for people to ignore the unhappy fact of climate change, and I think more people are getting involved to take positive action to stop it.

“Climate change is affecting everybody around the planet sooner or later, and some of us sooner. How could you not care?

“If humans keep on our lovely path we could very well be the first extinction caused by ourselves. Dinosaurs didn’t cause their own extinction, but human beings may cause their own extinction.

“Of course, no one will be around to record it, but I firmly believe that, and it’s one of the reasons that I am quite passionate about doing what I can to be part of the global movement to stop climate change.”

Landscape under threat. (Pic: Judy Rand)

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