Host Organisation:

Indigenous Environmental Network

Description:

Colonialist Extraction – Putting a price on Nature It is no secret that Multinational Development Banks (MBDs) and the United Nations are colonialist organizations whose work reproduces colonial legacies of inequality. The overarching logic and origins of these institutions, as well as the specific logic within projects under each climate fund, position the Global South, Indigenous Peoples, and frontline communities as ignorant and/or helpless instead of recognizing Indigenous Peoples as critically important experts of lands, waters, needs and communities. At best, projects consult or ‘include’ local communities as one voice amidst a choir of competing and powerful ‘stakeholders’ but do not ultimately share any decision-making power or direct funds, undermining efforts for sovereignty or self-determination. Moreover, Traditional Indigenous Knowledge is either completely ignored and dismissed or picked over for bits that can be co-opted and incorporated into greenwashing efforts. The relationship here is still one of extraction – climate institutions and banks choose projects based on their ability to generate profit and maximize private sector involvement. Climate change is simply treated as the newest area for financial expansion and development, once again entrenching the dynamic of Global North exploitation under the guise of helping the Global South. This is history repeating itself – it is the same development paradigm that contributed to the climate crisis in the first place, this time with even less accountability but a greener image. Crucially, these funds and the larger push to financialize climate change do nothing to address the root cause of climate change. Article 6 of the Paris agreement is itself the problem. That it poses solutions to global warming. By adopting a system of credits and offsets to Nationally Determined Contributions, it does not reduce emissions or keep fossil fuels in the ground. It only serves fossil fuel emissions business as usual. The Indigenous Environmental Network is calling for a cessation of fossil fuel extraction, including mining, particularly of minerals. Further, the projects States are proposing, as ITMOs are not regulated or standardized under the UNFCCC and there is no accountability mechanism led by Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ensure that projects in fact address climate change. New financing facilities and climate finance do not offer new solutions or new ways of thinking, they just funnel money into more of the same false solutions that have been peddled for years. Offsets to reduce Greenhouse gases is an oxymoron. The ‘solutions’ pushed under the UNFCCC are false solutions that actively perpetuate the climate crisis. This includes REDD+, a land-grab, and so-called nature-based solutions, ‘sustainable forest management’, carbon trading, and climate-smart agriculture. These projects push to financialize climate and to create large climate funds within development and financial institutions skirts around real solutions. They distract from the root causes of climate change and allow polluters to keep on polluting, while Indigenous Peoples continue to face the violent dispossession and cultural genocide of climate change.

Speakers:

1 speaker from each if the 7 Indigenous geographic regions

Langauge(s):

English, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish