Indigenous Environmental Network  

 
 
To many Indigenous Peoples – North and South - carbon trading is a new form of colonialism. I come from the north, from the industrialized and main contributor of greenhouse gases – the United States. As an Indigenous activist fighting for the rights of our indigenous tribes in North America, my people have witnessed first hand, near 300 years of imperialism and broken promises from colonial governments to trust in market-based solutions. To our Indigenous tribes, most market-based solutions have not been of benefit.
 
The emission reductions that the Kyoto Protocol established for industrialized countries were only 5.2% below 1990 levels­which most scientists agree is completely inadequate to effectively address global warming. Even these inadequate targets are being evaded through schemes such as carbon trading including the establishment of carbon “sinks” like monoculture tree plantations­mainly in the Global South. These schemes are being embraced by the very corporate entities that are destroying the Earth. Meanwhile destruction of true carbon reservoirs like native forests continues, leading to more releases of greenhouse gases.
 
Communities disproportionately impacted by climate change and the questionable “solutions” put forward by the carbon trading mechanisms include small island states, whose very existence is threatened, as well as indigenous peoples, the poor and the marginalized, particularly women, children and the elderly around the world. We must be concerned of the immediate danger to the continuation of the way of life of the Indigenous Peoples of the arctic-regions who are watching their world melt before their eyes.
 
The refusal of governments and international financial institutions like the World Bank to force corporations to phase out use of fossil fuels is causing more and more military conflicts around the world, magnifying social and environmental injustice and violations of human rights.
 
I call to your attention the human rights implications concerning the legitimacy of the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF). The PCF is an instrument to commodify the atmosphere, promote privatization and concentrate resources in the hands of a few, taking away the rights of many to live with dignity. The PCF is not a mechanism for mitigating climate change. It legitimizes a market for an indefinable "commodity", but in fact cannot be reliably described, quantified or verified. It is neither "carbon" nor pollution that is being traded, but people's lives and paper certificates claiming to be carbon credits.  The carbon offset culture and emissions trading carries with it concerns of human rights violations, especially with our Indigenous communities within the southern hemisphere of the Americas.
 
Just as peoples’ movements are rising up around the world against the privatization of water and biodiversity, so must civil society and Indigenous communities rise up against the privatization of the air, which is being promoted through the establishment of a massive “carbon market.”
 
The governmental leaders have not adequately nor openly discussed the topic of property rights to the atmosphere and whether fossil fuel polluters have the right to dump millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the common air space.
 
If we are to avert a climate crisis, drastic reductions in fossil fuel investment and use are inescapable, as is the protection of remaining native forests. The current flawed approach of international negotiations must be met by the active participation of a global movement of Northern and Southern peoples to take the climate back into their hands.
 
Climate politics cannot any longer be limited to the Kyoto Protocol. We must ask ourselves the question of what next and how can the protocol be superceded in a way that avoids its commitments to commodification and scientific abuse.
 
 
Thank you. Muchas Gracias. Pidamaya yedo!