Engaging IUCN’s Indigenous Member Organizations more broadly in IUCN
By Kristen Walker-Painemilla (Chair, CEESP Specialist Group on Indigenous Peoples, Customary & Environmental Laws and Human Rights)
Traditional indigenous territories cover up to 24% of the world’s land surface and contain a large share of the earth’s remaining healthy ecosystems. According to the UN, Indigenous Peoples number 370 million in some 70 countries from the Pacific to the heart of the Amazon and the Congo Basin to the Artic Region. We know that Indigenous peoples play a fundamental role in global forest and ecosystem management and our key partners of IUCN and its members.
Ironically, Indigenous peoples have contributed the least to world greenhouse gas emissions and have the smallest ecological footprints on Earth. Yet they suffer the worst impacts of climate change, including but not limited to, increased diseases associated to high temperatures in tropical and subtropical areas, increased food insecurity due to declining food sources both in terrestrial and marine realms, thawing permafrost, drought and desertification and so on.
While Indigenous Peoples have made great strides over the last 30 plus years through the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, garnered greater voice in policy fora, increased their technical capacity and have also transformed IUCN and its member organizations to look more effectively at people-centered conservation, recognizing the critical roles that indigenous peoples and local communities play in conservation and confronting climate change; we are still at a crossroads when it comes to rights and greater access to financial resources.
The absence of the full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, clear tenure or natural resource rights, livelihoods and direct access to financial resources continues to threaten the well-being of indigenous peoples and the environmental health of the lands and waters they manage.
Photo: Julian Idrobo
While there is growing recognition of the need to recognize indigenous peoples land rights, currently only 10% of the of the lands traditionally owned and occupied by indigenous peoples have legal rights. This insecurity in land rights threatens indigenous peoples, their traditional leadership, customary laws and the use of traditional knowledge to manage lands, territories and natural resources. Through CEESP, we have begun to engage IUCN Indigenous Members Organizations more directly to discuss many of these issues and how we can further leverage their role in IUCN and contribute to the larger program of IUCN’s work.
In April 2016, CEESP convened the first meeting of IUCN Member Organizations to look at how members could in the IUCN Knowledge Basket People in Nature (PIN) but this was also an opportunity to explore with members how engage in and with IUCN could be broadly. The meeting was convened by CEESP, the IUCN Secretariat and in conjunction with IUCN Indigenous Member Organizations. Indigenous members Sotzil and Ak’Tenamit hosted the meeting in Antigua, Guatemala. We invited the current 12 member organizations and were fortunate to have 8 of the 12 organizations participating in the meeting. Present at the meeting was:
- Foundation for the Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge (Fundación para la Promoción del Conocimiento Indígena, FPCI)-Panama
- Sotzil-Guatemala
- Ak’Tenamit- Guatemala
- Mosquitia Pawisa Aslika/Agencia Para El Desarrollo De La Mosquitia (MOPAWI) – Honduras.
- Kua'āina Ulu 'Auamo (KUA) –Hawaii
- Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) - South America
- Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) – Africa
- Centro para el Desarrollo del Indígena from Peru
The meeting provided a forum for IUCN Indigenous Member Organizations to have an open dialogue among organizations, CEESP and secretariat on common issues, successes, struggles and highlight their work and technical expertise. We explored common themes deeply embedded in a cultural perspective of nature based on reciprocity and inclusiveness, sense of place, rights and well-being of people as a part of it.
Through discussions around PIN, we utilized this effort to promote learning to improve our understanding of how nature contributes to local livelihoods and well-being. We focused highlighted the work that PIN is conducting in Costa Rica and Malawi and heard from Indigenous organizations such as COICA, Sotzil, Hua on how communities utilize nature in a material way while recognizing that use is embedded within worldviews that include deep-seated cultural norms, values, and understandings. We also discussed the symbolic interrelationships with nature expressed through cultural narratives, language, and traditions, including diverse understandings of sacred and divine aspects of nature and our relationship with natural resources.
We also took the opportunity to discuss the experience in the region with the Natural Resources Governance Framework ( NRGF), the broader IUCN program, the Upcoming Congress and recommended members to be part of the Whakatane Mechanism. Aroha Mead, CEESP chair, also took the opportunity to discuss Indigenous members category for IUCN.
While CEESP and IUCN have engaged IUCN Indigenous Member Organizations and nonmember organizations on various topics, this is the first time that the Indigenous Members were gathered as a constituent of IUCN. The meeting proved very fruitful in terms of bringing together the CEESP and IUCN Secretariat together with these important members. It opened news doors and allowed for broader collaboration and allows for a broader pathway forward engaging and supporting these key IUCN members recognizing the important role they play in conservation.
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