Indigenous, human rights being excluded in Paris accord
From Indigenous Environmental Network December 6 2015
An all-Indigenous flotilla of kayaks took to the waters of Paris today, followed by a press conference featuring Indigenous leaders from the Americas delivering strong messages: warnings of the worst consequences of climate change, and holistic solutions to protect Mother Earth. This event, proposed by the Kichwa community of the Sarayaku, served as a platform to reject false climate solutions, and to deliver three key documents designed as a means to address climate change.
The flotilla action this afternoon was made all the more poignant and necessary, following the first week of negotiations at COP21, where – despite vocal objections and protestations by Indigenous Peoples and their allies – the operative text of the Paris Accord has had the language concerning the rights of Indigenous Peoples “annexed” (meaning it’s not totally in the draft agreement, nor is it being fully excluded), rendering its future inclusion questionable.
“Considering that Indigenous communities often face the worst consequences of climate change, the decision to reject Indigenous Rights and advocate for false solutions is not only offensive and intolerable, but illogical and destructive to the climate change movement as a whole.” – Dallas Goldtooth, Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground Campaign Organizer. “Carbon trading and REDD+ projects are schemes to continue business-as-usual, nothing more. We, as frontline Indigenous communities, are the arbiters and innovators of real solutions towards mitigating climate change.”
Indigenous Peoples from the Amazon to the Arctic and their allies have and will continue to gather to demand real climate solutions, including bottom-up initiatives originating in Indigenous knowledge, culture, and spirituality.
“We’re here to present our proposal of kawsak-sacha: the living rainforest, the living Amazon. This proposal respects all living beings and helps achieve a balance of our planet, our Mother Earth. Indigenous peoples live with this wisdom – live in harmony with these living beings, and we’re here to protect the lagoons and the water, the trees and the mountains. We ARE the balance, we LIVE the balance and this is our contribution here in Paris.” Felix Santi, Sarayaku
“Only if our proposal is heeded will we be able to ensure the future, ensure the planet for future generations – so we present this proposal to the governments of the world and we declare indigenous peoples’ territories of vital and crucial importance to the future of our planet. There must be no more oil drilling, no more mining, no more logging on our lands and territories, and we must embrace this indigenous proposal of the living forest”.
For the second week of negotiations in Paris, Indigenous delegates are calling on their allies to push the parties involved in direct negotiations to reverse this damaging decision, thereby taking the climate change movement forwards, not backwards.
“The ground we walk on is literally melting beneath us. Indigenous peoples of the world are being affected by this climate chaos first, and our issues are compounded by the assault on our traditional territories by the fossil fuel extractive industries.” – Faith Gemmill, executive director REDOIL. “We kicked Shell out of the Arctic but immediately following that, the state and our congressional representatives called for drilling in the last 5% of America’s only Arctic coast: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is sacred to my people. This is our home, these are our sacred places, and it is our belief that the destruction of humanity begins if/when the oil companies gain access to these sacred places. We’re here to call upon the governments of the world to recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples within the operative, legally binding text. No more business as usual – we don’t have the luxury of time. Humanity’s survival is on the line. We need a just transition to sustainable energy, economies and communities.
Video: Clayton Thomas-Muller calls out to Allies
Video: Indigenous Activists Speak Out
Battle flares over including Indigenous in climate deal
By Brandi Morin and Jorge Barrera APTN National News December 5 2015
Climate change negotiations were set to continue into the Paris night Friday amid an unfolding battle over including a reference to Indigenous peoples in the final text of the expected global agreement.
Chief Wilton Littlechild, who recently returned from Paris, said he was hopeful the final text of the climate change agreement would include a reference to Indigenous people.
Littlechild, whose experience in UN negotiations stems back to his time helping to write the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, said there’s been a back and forth between countries as to what to include in the final agreement.
“Yesterday (Thursday) we were in serious danger of (a reference to Indigenous peoples) being deleted, but now we are back in,” said Littlechild, in an interview with APTN National News.
A report Friday from a delegate in Paris stated the reference to Indigenous peoples was still in limbo, but negotiations were expected to continue into the night.
Representatives from about 150 countries, along with about 40,000 delegates from about 195 countries, are currently negotiation a new global agreement on climate change at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris. Part of the negotiations aim to create a global agreement on climate change so the planet’s warming does not surpass 2C above temperature levels that existed before the industrial revolution.
Indigenous peoples in Canada are already feeling the brunt of environmental changes caused by climate change. Canada is currently warming at twice the global average, but warming is occurring at an even higher rates in the North.
The Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut are already starting to notice extensive permafrost melting which creating increasingly widespread infrastructure problems.
As part of a wider change in tone, Canada has been one of the leading global voices on the importance of including Indigenous peoples in proposed solutions to combat climate change. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was only one of two world leaders to mention Indigenous peoples during speeches at the conference, said Littlechild.
Littlechild said Canada and the U.S. both supported the reference to Indigenous peoples in the text. When the paragraph that included the reference was expanded to include human rights, women’s rights, gender rights and a mention of “occupied territories,” the U.S. and other states began to express resistance.
The move threatened to basically sever the reference to Indigenous peoples from the text, said Littlechild.
Then a proposal was put on the table to move a reference to Indigenous peoples into the preamble of the text’s final agreement, which Littlechild said would have allayed some of the concerns.
“There were some states who did not want to refer to collective rights, then that meant deleting Indigenous peoples rights,” said Littlechild. “So there was a lot of negotiating strategies that were being adopted by a number of states. At the end of the day Canada supported our position that it should be the rights of indigenous peoples.”
Littlechild said negotiations still have a long way to go.
The chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Okalik Eegeesiak, one of delegates attending COP21 on behalf of the Inuit in Paris said climate change is not just an environmental issue, but also one about human rights.
“The melting of the Arctic is impacting all aspects of Inuit life therefore the final text must make the rights of Indigenous peoples operative and keep it in….We have the right to be cold” said Eegeesiak, in a statement.
A First Nations woman representing her home community of Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Alberta as an Indigenous delegate also expressed concern with the way things were unfolding. She said the removal of the operative paragraph in Article 2.2 signified the erasure of the existence of Indigenous peoples and front line communities.
“Here we sit on the outside as the worlds states debate and decide where our rights fit,” said Crystal Lameman. “The issue we take as Indigenous peoples is that our rights are founded in the rights of nature which is the essence of who we are and the very existence of our ways of knowing and being …We belong in this treaty, we have a place in this discussion. Our future and that of our children is not up for negotiation.”
The negotiations are expect to conclude on Dec. 11. The climate change talks began in earnest on Nov. 30.
Indigenous Rights on Chopping Block
News release from Indigenous Environmental Network December 5 2015
On Friday December 4th, Indigenous Peoples from around the globe demonstrated inside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC/COP21) convention centre at Le Bourget. The protest was carried out to highlight objections to the proposed removal of language pertaining to both the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights from Article 2.2 of the draft Paris Accord, ending the first week of negotiations. Norway, the UK and the EU have been key players in this removal of the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Despite such vocal objections from Indigenous Peoples and their allies, the operative text of the Paris Accord, as it stands today, has had the rights of Indigenous Peoples language/clauses removed, and there is now a proposal to have ‘Human Rights’ removed as well. At present, this leaves the rights of Indigenous Peoples only reflected within the preamble – which is purely aspirational text, and not legally binding or enforceable in any way.
“The inclusion of the rights of Indigenous Peoples text, in addition to Human Rights text is crucial. A Western, non-Indigenous evaluation of Human Rights does not necessarily adequately protect our rights as Indigenous Peoples,” states Princess Daazhraii Johnson, REDOIL Alaska spokesperson.
“Many of our Indigenous peoples still live off the land, living a subsistence-based lifestyle. And given that many of the world’s fossil fuel reserves are on or adjacent to Indigenous lands, we must protect our collective rights to self-determine our relationship to Mother Earth by rejecting false solutions to addressing climate change,” concluded Ms. Johnson.
In addition, many countries do not recognize the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples as Human Rights. The Western international human rights system is oriented towards individual rights, and so a general reference to human rights does not adequately protect the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“At the moment the rights of Indigenous Peoples all over the globe are being violated by ‘green climate projects’ – such as hydropower dams – in the name of ‘climate mitigation’. If such violations are happening now, imagine what will come with a legally binding document, where the rights of Indigenous Peoples are not guaranteed,” stated Eriel Deranger, member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
Positions against both the exclusion of Human Rights and Indigenous Rights in the operative text are said to be based on concerns about potential legal liability, if climate change is judged to have violated those rights.
With the draft Paris agreement heavily focused on voluntary market-based technological solutions – such as forest and conservation offsets – Indigenous Peoples are gravely concerned that without concrete Indigenous Rights language (and safeguards from privatisation) codified in the operative text, they will be further displaced from their lands. Green economy schemes (like the World bank REDD+) provide financial mechanisms for industrialised nations to justify expansion of fossil fuel regimes – such as Canada’s controversial Tar Sands giga-project in Northern Alberta, or offshore drilling in Alaska’s outer continental shelf. This disproportionately impacts Indigenous Peoples of the North, all the while simultaneously privatising Indigenous Peoples lands in the South for the purposes of laundering Western carbon pollution, via the above mentioned forest and conservation offsets.
“Our fight to get Indigenous Peoples Rights included in the operative text, is non-negotiable,” states Crystal Lameman,Treaty Coordinator and Communications Manager for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation. “We belong in this treaty, we have a place in this discussion. Our future and the future of our children is not up for negotiation. The removal of operative Article 2.2 is the erasure of our existence as People of Color, Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities because we surely will be the first to experience climate catastrophe”
As we enter the second week of negotiations of the Paris Accord, Indigenous People will continue to lobby and challenge those who oppose the inclusion of Human Rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples into the operative text.
“We cannot negotiate a climate agreement at this critical time without the recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, who are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change and the innovators of solutions we need to stabilize our climate. For the benefit of all human beings, we are fighting for a meaningful outcome from these negotiations, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples MUST be included in Article 2.2 of the Paris Accord,” stated Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Draft of Paris Agreement from December 5th 2015 LINK
Goldtooths on Democracy Now
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