Native Energy & Climate

News posts and information can be found at the bottom of this page - or can be found in the category list located in the right-hand column.

“The Native Energy and Climate Campaign strengthens and builds the capacity and political power of Indigenous Peoples to address the impacts of fossil fuel energy development in Indigenous communities and motivate the creation of sustainable and clean energy and climate policies at all levels of governance.”

The Climate Justice Movement is Growing!

On both the national and international level, the climate justice movement is growing in number and strength. Grassroots communities from North America and around the globe are banding together to combat the attempt to commodify nature through the carbon market and instead fight for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Mother Earth.

In 2008 IEN created the Global Well Being: Energy, Climate and Environmental Justice project within the workplan of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). And although the Global Well Being Working Group (GWB) got off to slow start, GGJ has started developing into a climate justice movement leader. The GWB, hosted by the Bus Riders Union (http://www.thestrategycenter.org/project/bus-riders-union), met in Los Angeles to discuss our strategies. Similar to IEN, GGJ is engaged in the “Road to Rio”, which includes strategic stops at the UN climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, Cochabamba +1 in Bolivia, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, otherwise known as Rio+20, in June 2012, and finally Doha Qatar in December 2012.

IEN Executive Director Tom Goldtooth breaks the down the impacts of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) policies on Indigenous Peoples. Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSBcLL4uLhk.

Internationally as well, the climate justice movement has grown, thanks in great part to the leadership of Indigenous President Evo Morales and the direction provided during the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother in Earth in Bolivia in April 2010. IEN traveled to Dakar, Senegal to participate in the World Social Forum. Along with social movement leaders from across the globe, IEN drafted the “Dakar Climate Justice Statement of Unity” which lays out the key political issues, strategies, and convergence moments of the international climate justice movement over the next year and half.

The following are links to documents, position papers, press releases, etc., that have been issued by IEN, and community groups effected by fossil fuel production.