Indigenous peoples’ now being recognized for maintaining forest & combatting climate change

Indigenous groups are often better placed than scientists to provide information on local biodiversity and environmental change, and are important contributors to the governance of biodiversity at local and global levels, the IPBES report noted.

Community's agriculture Landscape

According to a 2019 ILO study, indigenous peoples represent 6.2 per cent of the world’s population, amounting to over 476.6 million individuals spread across the globe. On the basis of data from official publications, such as censuses and labour force and household surveys, the region containing the highest proportion of the world’s indigenous peoples is Asia and the Pacific (70.5 per cent), followed by Africa (16.3 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (11.5 per cent), North America (1.6 per cent) and Europe and Central Asia (0.1 per cent) (ILO 2019a). Two thirds of the world’s indigenous peoples are estimated to live in Asia, approximately 260 million people, representing more than 2,000 distinct civilizations and languages. However, they continue to be among the poorest of the poor, even though sustained growth and poverty reduction efforts of the region have significantly contributed to declining poverty rates. This is a stark reminder of the unique challenges faced by indigenous women and men.

If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change.

Nenquimo, leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waorani people

According to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, indigenous peoples have “historical continuity or association with a given region or part of a given region prior to colonization or annexation; identify themselves as indigenous and be accepted as members by their community; have strong links to territories, surrounding natural resources and ecosystems; maintain, at least in part, distinct languages, cultures, beliefs and knowledge systems; are resolved to maintain and further develop their identity and distinct social, economic, cultural and political institutions as distinct peoples and communities; and often form non‐dominant sectors of society.”

When land is owned, managed or occupied in a traditional way, the word “traditional” refers to a knowledge that stems from centuries-old observation and interaction with nature. This knowledge is often embedded in a cosmology that reveres the one-ness of life, considers nature as sacred and acknowledges humanity as a part of it. And it encompasses practical ways to ensure the balance of the environment in which they live, so it may continue to provide services such as water, fertile soil, food, shelter and medicines.

How are indigenous people affected by changes in usufruct and de-facto laws, biodiversity, ecosystems, and climate change?

Due to their subsistence economies and spiritual connection to lands and territories, most indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately from loss of biological diversity and environmental degradation. Their lives, survival, development chances, knowledge, environment and health conditions are threatened by environmental degradation, large scale industrial activities, toxic waste, conflicts and forced migration, as well as by land-use and land-cover changes (such as deforestation for agriculture and extractives for example) because of new laws imposed on them by so called authorities in modern society systems. These challenges are further exacerbated by climate change.

“The extractivists, the capitalists, the government – they say indigenous people are ignorant,” they hardly know anything about protecting environment. Such a strong and manipulated statement for people who are in their side, and totally disconnected in the cities from reality of environment behind living in a conceptive lifestyle. The indigenous people, know why climate change is happening… humanity of modern human is damaging and destroying their planet. As indigenous people, they must unite in a single objective: that they demand that authorities and capitalists should respect them.”

Rather than helping, some mitigation measures can increase the threat to indigenous peoples’ territories and coping strategies–as in the case of biofuel initiatives, exotic non native trees plantations in the name of sustainability with destroying the whole habitat of the region. While biofuel initiatives are meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they may affect the ecosystems, water supply and landscape on which indigenous peoples depend, ultimately leading to an increase in monoculture crops and plantations and a consequent decline in biodiversity, food and water security.

Other day, I was listening to one of an author turned politician and former international civil servant (not to name him), about colonial resource extraction strategy when they ruled not only India but many other countries of the world. But after independence the situation never changed, with state control of the forests continuing with cultivators moving in to capture the lands and companies moving in to grab the timber, hill’s natural resources like bauxite for mining purpose, and people became more marginalized than ever. The rebellions had forced the Britishers to pass some laws to protect the indigenous community, but after independence, those who had been encroaching on the lands got control over them as tenants. The post-independent elites have continued the policy of the British they claimed to fight calling treating them like conquered people with maintaining in their own hands the control over forest wealth.

From the Kalahari Desert to the Himalaya Mountains to the Amazon Rainforest, droughts, floods and fires have beset communities already struggling with poverty and incursions onto their land. That makes it all the more imperative for the outside world to acknowledge the rights and practices of indigenous communities, said Nenquimo.

“We can trace our genealogy to the origins of the universe,” said Gerrard Albert, a Whanganui tribal leader. “And therefore rather than us being masters of the natural world, we are part of it. “We have been here forever and we know the natural cycle of things,” said Maori leader Catherine Davis. “We know when there is a blip, we know when there is a glitch. We know when and what is going down in terms of sustainability or on the name of go green. Capitalist have tried to be as sophisticated as they could to use various tags, brands, intellectual knowledge and closed room researches to dodge caretakers and the whole world of many species all together. So we need to be heard more clearly now. ”We want to live like that as our starting point. “And that is not an anti-development, or anti-economic use of the river, but to begin with the view that it is a living being, and then consider its future from that central belief.”