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ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 28 (Tierramérica) – While industrialised countries like Canada continue to emit ever-higher levels of greenhouse-effect gases, indigenous peoples around the world are working to survive and adapt to an increasingly dangerous climate.

Over millennia, indigenous peoples have developed a large arsenal of practices that are of potential benefit today for coping with climate change, including some holistic and refreshingly practical ideas.

“Why not give automobiles and planes a day of rest? And then later on, two days of rest. That would cut down on pollution,” suggested Carrie Dann, an elder from the Western Shoshone Nation, whose ancestral lands extend across the western United States.

Dann, winner of the 1993 Right Livelihood Award – known as the Alternative Nobel Prize – for her efforts to protect ancestral lands, made her proposal before the 400 delegates gathered in Anchorage, Alaska, Apr. 20-24 for the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change.

Dann warned that Mother Nature is getting warmer and the “fever” needed to be cured. “We see many range (grassland) fires in my territory, it is getting so hot,” she said.

To prevent similar uncontrolled wildfires that have burned up large portions of Australia and killed hundreds of people in recent years, the Aborigines of Western Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, are using traditional fire practices to reduce such wildfires.

Preventing these fires also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and, for the first time in the world, these Aborigines have sold 17 million dollars’ worth of carbon credits to industry, generating significant new income for the local community, according to a report presented in Anchorage.

Australia’s Aborigines have traditionally used controlled burning following the rainy season to create barriers to stop the intense wildfires later during the dry season.

Wildfires account for a substantial portion of Australia’s carbon emissions and have been very destructive. However, in recent years few Aborigines live on the land any more so there have been fewer controlled burns. But now there is a new role to play in the fight against global warming.

According to Sam Johnston, of the Tokyo-based United Nations University, a summit co-sponsor, it is in the world’s best interest to take into account indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge.

In Asia, indigenous people are developing diverse crop varieties and utilising different cropping patterns, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Filipina leader and chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told the delegates.

They are also involved in sustainable agro-forestry and energy production based on small-scale biomass and micro-dam projects.

On the Indonesian island of Bali, indigenous peoples are doing reef rehabilitation work and protecting mangroves. In the Philippines, they are mapping ancestral waters and developing an integrated management plan.

“Many are doing these things on their own, with no support,” said Tauli-Corpuz.

In Honduras, faced with increasing hurricane strikes and drastic weather changes, the Quezungal people have developed a farming method that involves planting crops under trees so the roots anchor the soil and reduce the loss of harvests during natural disasters.

Indigenous peoples in Guyana have adopted a nomadic lifestyle, moving to more forested zones during the dry season, and are now planting manioc, their main staple, in alluvial plains where it was previously too moist to grow crops.

Farmers in Belize are returning to traditional agricultural practices and moving up to higher ground, other delegates reported.

In Africa, the Baka Pygmies of southeast Cameroon and the Bambendzele of Congo have developed new fishing and hunting methods to adapt to a decrease in precipitation and an increase in forest fires.

Although indigenous peoples have great capacity to adapt, many treaties and international laws guarantee their rights to food and traditional livelihoods, but climate change threatens all of this, according to Andrea Carmen, a member of the Yaqui Indian Nation, of the U.S. southwest.

When the chiefs of the tribes in the western Canadian province of Alberta declared that there should be no more oil production from tar sands, they were ignored, said Carmen who is also executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council.

Alberta’s tar sands oil projects are the major reason why Canada’s latest greenhouse gas inventory increased four percent from 2006 to 2007. That increase puts the country 33.8 percent over its commitments established in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, in force since 2005.

But indigenous peoples are also wary of recent actions by governments and industries undertaken in response to climate change, such as building wind farms and biofuel plants, because these are often located on or directly affect their lands and livelihoods, says Gunn-Britt Retter, of Finland’s Saami Council.

“We have the knowledge of how to live through these climate changes. We need to use traditional knowledge to help all our cultures live through these changes,” Retter said.

“Our message to the world is that we need full and effective participation at the national and international levels in order for our cultures to survive these changes,” he added.

It has been 17 years since the first U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings were held to solve the climate crisis, said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the former head of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

“We must act quickly… This is the last chance to take control,” she told the delegates by videoconference from her home in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. “The world needs the wisdom of our cultures.”

(*Correspondent Stephen Leahy’s travel to Alaska was financed by the United Nations University and Project Word, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation for media diversity. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END/2009)

source: ipsnews

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 27 (IPS) – Already suffering significant impacts from climate change, indigenous peoples at the close of an international summit here rejected the concept of carbon trading and offsets. Many also called for a moratorium on all new oil and gas exploration in their traditional territories and the eventual phase-out of fossil fuels.

“It has been heartbreaking to hear everyone’s stories about the dire threats climate change poses to their survival,” said Andrea Carmen of the Yaqui Indian Nation in the U.S. at the end of the U.N.-affiliated Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change here last Friday.

More than 400 indigenous people and observers from 80 nations participated in the first ever global discussion on climate change focusing on native communities.

“Indigenous peoples are all profoundly affected by climate change, losing our traditional foods, homes and livelihoods,” Carmen, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council, a U.S.-based rights organisation, told IPS.

Thirty years ago, the Inuit peoples of the Arctic warned the world of the dangers of climate change, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, president of the United Nations General Assembly, told delegates.

“Indigenous peoples have the lightest ecological footprint and have kept carbon out of the atmosphere by fighting against oil and gas extraction and protecting forests on their lands,” said Father d’Escoto.

Indigenous peoples can help the rest of the world cope with climate change, but the world has to be willing to listen and involve them at local, national and international levels and ensure that their rights are respected, he said. In particular, indigenous peoples need to be involved in the major international negotiations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) later this year in Copenhagen.

“The world is starting to listen, make sure your voices are heard,” he said.

However, many indigenous peoples explicitly reject mainstream climate mitigation proposals like carbon offset programmes and carbon trading, calling them “false solutions” that have nothing to do with solving climate change crisis. Such programmes continue to allow ever greater amounts of carbon to be emitted, said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, an NGO based in the U.S.

“It’s privatisation of the air,” Goldtooth told IPS. Under such programmes, the atmosphere becomes another property that can be bought and sold, he said. “We cannot reconcile this with our strong cosmovision (understanding of the world) and spirituality.”

Goldtooth and many others are also wary of a proposed carbon emission reduction programme called reduced deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Deforestation and degradation account for up to 25 percent of all anthropogenic carbon emissions annually.

REDD proposes that industrialised countries compensate tropical countries for halting deforestation and thus reducing overall emissions of greenhouse gas emissions. In theory, local people would be compensated for protecting their forests.

However, such a programme would be a disaster for indigenous peoples without national recognition of their land rights, said Jorge Franco, co-director of Los Pueblos Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica, an indigenous organisation in Latin America.

Indigenous Amazonian people are displaced and sometimes killed by paramilitaries taking over indigenous lands for oil palm plantations, Franco said through an interpreter. Oil and gas projects keep happening in their territories without their consent. “Land titling must come before anything like REDD,” he stressed.

There is also a major need for capacity building to teach local communities what such programmes are all about and what the real benefits and problems may be. “Local communities must have the final word in all proposals,” Franco said.

But the first and most important action on climate is for all industrialised countries to cut their emissions, he added: “Here (in the north) is where the carbon pollution is happening that is affecting our forests.”

That point is emphasised a final declaration signed by the indigenous representatives and Father d’Escoto and which will be presented at the U.N. General Assembly and later at the UNFCCC in Copenhagen this December. The Anchorage Declaration says: “Mother Earth is no longer in a period of climate change, but in climate crisis.”

More controversially, it says indigenous people support a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling on indigenous lands and a phase-out of fossil fuels while respecting the rights of indigenous people to develop their resources.

Many participants, and particularly the youth delegates and those from the Pacific region, wanted a full moratorium on new oil and gas drilling and a phase-out of fossil fuels. However, delegates from the oil- and gas-rich Arctic region demurred.

“There was major support for a full moratorium,” said youth delegate Clayton Thomas-Müller of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, Canada.

“In my opinion the extractive industries (oil, gas, mining), the World Bank and promoters of REDD have incredible power and resources to cause division amongst our grassroots organisations,” Thomas-Müller told IPS.

However, he also felt that support was building amongst indigenous peoples to challenge nation states regarding “false solutions and market-based carbon mitigation schemes” and those trying to profit from the climate crisis.

The member states of the United Nations need to know that the planet is our mother, David Choquehuanca Céspedes, foreign minister of Bolivia, told delegates towards the end of the summit.

“We all live on the skirts of our Mother – that is how we say it in my region,” Céspedes said through a translator.

“We, all of us, were raised by Mother Earth. We’re all brothers and sisters, not just humans, plants and animals. Indigenous people understand that the most important thing of all is life in all its forms,” he said. “Climate change threatens life.”

source: ipsnews

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 22 (IPS) – Humanity’s hot carbon breath is not just melting the planet’s polar regions, it is disrupting natural systems and livelihoods around the world, indigenous people reported this week at a global meeting on climate change in Anchorage, Alaska.

“We indigenous people are the prow of the ship of humanity in the oncoming waves of climate change,” said Vanessa Marsh of the small Pacific island of Niue.

Indigenous people are here to alert humanity and lead the way in healing Earth, Marsh, a youth delegate, told more than 400 representatives of world’s indigenous peoples here.

Coastal erosion, mud slides, longer droughts and more severe hurricanes are just some of the impacts of climate change affecting the Caribbean region, Chief Charles Williams of the Kalinago people on the island of Dominica told the U.N.-affiliated Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change.

“Most indigenous people live on the margins…their ‘purses’ are not as strong as others when it comes to coping with climate change,” Williams said.

“Climate change will make things significantly worse for people with difficult lives already due to discrimination, poor nutrition and health conditions,” Anthony Oliver-Smith of the University of Florida and United Nations University’s Institute for the Environment and Human Security.

“Most Indigenous Peoples today live oppressed existences as minority groups within states. Climate change for them layers another potentially crushing pressure on top of many others,” Oliver-Smith said in statement.

At least 5,000 distinct groups of indigenous peoples have been identified in more than 70 countries, with a combined global population estimated at 300-350 million, representing about 6 percent of humanity.

Severe rainfall, extreme temperatures and rising sea levels are threatening the very existence of Pacific Island peoples, reported Fiu Mataese Elisara from the Pacific island of Samoa.

“Other islanders have already been displaced. This (climate change) is a life and death matter for us,” Elisara, executive director of O le Siosiomaga Society, an environmental NGO, told IPS.

Many indigenous peoples have inhabited their lands for thousands of years. That long tenure and intimate connection with the natural environment has given them a unique sensitivity and understanding. And representatives of indigenous peoples around the world related the changes they are experiencing at the summit.

In Papua New Guinea, indigenous people report being forced to relocate due to a combination of population growth and the inundation of coastal land due to sea level rise. On the island of Borneo, the third largest island in the world, the Dayak people have documented climate variations based on observations of bird species, rising water levels, and the loss of traditional medicinal plants.

Temperature changes in the Andean region have had a drastic impact on agriculture, health and biodiversity, evidenced by an increase in respiratory illnesses, a decrease in alpaca farming and a shortened growing season.

African indigenous peoples are reporting “serious impacts on their livelihoods” following a regional meeting to discuss climate change last month, said Joesph Ole Simel of Kenya. “Climate change is not just an environmental issue, it is a human rights issue,” said Simel, who heads the Mainyoito Pastoralist Integrated Development Organisation in Kenya.

Drought and the rise of new diseases affecting livestock are principle impacts which are leading to conflicts between tribal communities and land degradation as more animals have to share reduced pastoral lands. That in turn is forcing more and more people to abandon their traditional livelihoods and move into cities.

Drought and hotter weather are making it very difficult to grow maize in most regions in Mexico. Entire regions like Sonora will not be able to grow maize by 2020. “We don’t want any more heat,” said a representative from Oaxaca, Mexico through a translator.

The vast indigenous regions in Russia that compromise 75 percent of the country’s landmass are experiencing a wide range of climate impacts including melting permafrost, flooding rivers, and forests receding north, reducing the pasture for reindeers and bringing new insects and diseases.

More frequent and stronger tropical storms and hurricanes are a major threat to the entire Caribbean region, says Cletus Springer, of Saint Lucia and director of the Department of Sustainable Development for the Organisation of American States.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan devastated Grenada, a small country in the region. “That storm set the country back 10 years,” Springer told the summit.

“We should never let those countries that created the problem (climate change) sidestep their responsibilities. Don’t let them feel comfortable with their neglect, not for one moment,” he urged delegates.

Stephen Leahy’s trip to Alaska was financed by the United Nations University and Project Word, a U.S.-based media NGO. (END/2009)

source: ipsnews

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 20 (Tierramérica) – While indigenous peoples from around the world are meeting in this Alaskan city to seek a greater role in global climate negotiations, the rapidly warming Arctic is forcing some Inuit villages to be relocated.

"We have centuries of experience in adapting to the climate and our traditional lifestyles have very low carbon footprints," Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, an indigenous leader from the Philippines and chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told Tierramérica.

Carbon-based gases are the principal cause of the greenhouse effect, which leads to climate change. The excessive release of these gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, comes from human activities: the combustion of fossil fuels in industry and transportation, and emissions from livestock production and deforestation.

Some 400 indigenous people, including Bolivian President Evo Morales and observers from 80 nations, are gathered in Anchorage, Alaska for the Apr. 20-24 U.N.-affiliated Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change.

They will discuss and synthesise ways that traditional knowledge can be used to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.

"Indigenous peoples have contributed the least to the global problem of climate change, but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact," said Patricia Cochran, chair of both the Inuit Circumpolar Council and the April Summit.

In her opinion, indigenous peoples are leaders and experts when it comes to the climate debate. Any dialogue or negotiations will be far richer and productive with their participation, she said.

But indigenous peoples are also on the front lines when it comes to climate change impacts, Cochran told Tierramérica.

The village of Newtok, about 800 kilometres east of Anchorage, is the first of several villages in need of relocation due to climate change. Because of higher average temperatures, intensifying river flow and melting permafrost are destroying homes and infrastructure, forcing 320 residents to relocate to a higher site 15 km west, at an expected cost in the tens of millions of dollars.

Five other Alaskan Inuit settlements are in urgent need of relocation, including Shishmaref (population 560) and Kivalina (377), where autumn storm waves are no longer contained by shore-fast ice, leading to severe coastal erosion. Dozens of similar settlements are considered threatened.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the regions most affected – such as the Arctic, Caribbean and Amazon – are where most of the indigenous people live, says Sam Johnston of the Tokyo-based United Nations University, a co-sponsor of the Summit.

Around the world, at least 5,000 distinct groups of indigenous peoples have been identified in more than 70 countries, with a combined global population estimated at 300 to 350 million, representing about six percent of humanity.

Because of their long cultural and spiritual connection to the land, oceans and wildlife, indigenous peoples have a lot to offer, Johnston said in an interview.

"The world owes it to both the indigenous peoples and itself to pay greater heed to the opinions of these communities and to the wisdom of ages-old traditional knowledge," he said.

The major goal of the Summit is to help strengthen the indigenous communities' participation in and articulate messages and recommendations to the December conference of parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Copenhagen.

There, the world's governments will negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol (which expires in 2012) to reduce carbon emissions and to create an adaptation fund to help poor countries.

The indigenous Summit will conclude in Anchorage on Friday with a declaration and action plan, and a call for world governments to fully include indigenous peoples in any post-Kyoto climate change regime adopted in Copenhagen.

Indigenous peoples currently have no formal role at the climate talks, although native representatives were part of Bolivia's delegation to a series of preparatory meetings earlier this month in Bonn, Germany.

Ideally, indigenous peoples would have a formal advisory role, as they currently do under the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity, said Tauli-Corpuz.

"Unfortunately, no government has been willing to push for this under the UNFCCC," she said.

The "Anchorage Declaration" will be signed by President Evo Morales, who is of Aymara origin; Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, president of the U.N. General Assembly; and Danish Parliamentarian Juliane Henningsen, representing Greenland, says Cochrane.

Issues like reducing deforestation and boosting massive re-forestation efforts can have major impacts on indigenous peoples, and it is vital that indigenous rights are acknowledged and respected in any final climate agreement, said Tauli-Corpuz.

But, warned the UNU's Johnston, bilateral discussions, especially between China and the United States, are heating up ahead of the Copenhagen meet, and may push indigenous peoples' involvement to the sidelines.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END/2009)

source: ipsnews