Climate Change and indigenous groups
Thalif Deen
As the United Nations readies for a key climate change meeting in
Poland next month, a London-based human rights group warns that any new
deal on global warming would be seriously compromised if the most
vulnerable groups, specifically indigenous peoples, are shut out of the
negotiations.
“The entire U.N. process will be flawed if communities that have
firsthand experience of dealing with climate change are not allowed to
participate,” says Minority Rights Group (MRG).
Mark Lattimer, MRG’s executive director, says “because we naturally
think of climate change as affecting us all the whole planet there is a
tendency to resist considering the effect on particular groups.”
Human rights advocates, he said, have also arrived late to a debate
that has been long dominated by environmentalists.
“Yet indigenous peoples living in fragile environments are not only
more likely to be affected adversely by climate change, they are already
being affected, sometimes in devastating ways,” Lattimer told IPS.
The upcoming U.N. meeting in Poznan, Poland scheduled to take place
Dec.
1-12 is expected to agree on a programme of work in advance of a
major U.N. conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Both conferences will be working towards a comprehensive climate
change regime to be established after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol,
which requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions, runs out.
Asked if the international community is to be blamed for the
continued marginalisation of indigenous peoples, Lattimer said
inter-governmental negotiations frequently marginalise civil society,
which has taken decades to find an effective voice in U.N. human rights
and development processes.
In the climate change negotiations, which are much more recent, they
are still largely excluded, often deliberately, he added.
“Governments think of indigenous communities, who may face
displacement or even the eradication of their homelands, as being part
of the problem, when in reality they should be seen as part of the
solution,” he added.
Speaking at a U.N. seminar last year, Daniel Salau Rogei of the Simba
Maasai Outreach Organisation, and a member of Maasai tribe in Kenya,
said his community was nomadic and largely made of farmers dependent on
their traditional lands and affected by changing weather patterns.
The Maasai considered themselves to be part of nature and, indeed,
more than 75 percent of Kenyan wildlife species were found in Maasai
territory.
But the territory was under threat from climate change, as well as
from encroachment and predation by logging companies and other
international business concerns that were actively wiping out natural
resources and biological species, he added.
The MRG study says the impact of climate change hits indigenous and
minority communities the hardest because they live in ecologically
diverse areas and their livelihoods are dependent on the environment.
There are two reasons why minority and indigenous communities are
more affected than others as the world’s climate changes.
Firstly, because they have a close and unique relationship with
nature and often the entire community’s livelihood depends on the
environment, the study said.
Secondly, because these communities are already living in poor,
marginalised areas, and in some countries are already victims of state
discrimination.
The livelihoods of indigenous and minority communities, including
Sami reindeer herders in Norway, Sweden and Finland and Khmer Krom rice
farmers in the Mekong Delta in south Vietnam, depend heavily on the
environment.
Indigenous communities in particular live in fragile ecosystems,
ranging from small islands in the Pacific to mountainous regions, arid
lands in Africa and the ice-covered Arctic.
The report also points out that melting ice caps and desertification
occurring as a result of climate change prevent animals accessing food
and hinders herding and livestock rearing.
“This leads to loss of livestock, which in turn curtails incomes and
leads to poverty, hunger and food shortages,” it says.
The eventual long-term impacts include death or migration to cities,
often condemning generations to poverty, and a shift from traditional
ways of life.
Asked if future climate change negotiations, including the plight of
minorities, will undergo a radical change when the new administration of
U.S. President Barack Obama takes office in January next year, Lattimer
said that Obama has indicated that under his presidency, the U.S. will
become both more environmentally responsible and take a more
multilateralist approach to international affairs.
“This is welcome, but the US has traditionally been sceptical of
indigenous peoples’ rights,” he noted.
He said the U.S. was one of only four countries that voted against
the U.N.
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, agreed by the
General Assembly last year.
“Indigenous groups are hoping for a change of approach, but they are
likely to be disappointed,” he warned.
IPS
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