‘Indigenous’ and ‘Local’ Shouldn’t Be Conflated Q&A With Indigenous Leader Sara Olsvig

Metadata

• Author: Latoya Abulu
• Full Title: ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Local’ Shouldn’t Be Conflated: Q&A With Indigenous Leader Sara Olsvig
• Category: articles
• Document Tags: #planet
• URL: https://news.mongabay.com/2024/01/indigenous-and-local-shouldnt-be-conflated-qa-with-indigenous-leader-sara-olsvig/

Highlights

• Although Indigenous peoples’ ways of life are typically the most sustainable, they’re also often the most threatened by climate change — as well as by activities meant to mitigate its impact, such as the mining of minerals for the renewable energy transition. (View Highlight)
• While there were 350 Indigenous participants at the conference, this was still far fewer than the record 2,400 fossil fuel lobbyists. (View Highlight)
• Olsvig successfully called for the texts agreed at COP28 to recognize Indigenous knowledge as equal to other knowledge systems and to differentiate between Indigenous peoples and local communities by removing the “and” and inserting a comma in the common phrase “Indigenous groups and local communities.” (View Highlight)
• Of course, and not least importantly, [we need to] see a clear and distinct recognition of Indigenous peoples and our rights, including the knowledge of Indigenous peoples, integrated into the text. And that it is that exact knowledge that has ensured that 80% of the world’s biodiversity is safeguarded by Indigenous peoples, although we make up less than 5% of the world’s population.
  [Indigenous knowledge] includes also the spiritual relation to the nature around us and us being an integrated part of the nature. And it is intergenerational. It also carries with us our worldviews and cultures.
  And when it is conflated with, for example, local knowledge, it is watered down. It’s devaluated. And the same happens also when we talk about Indigenous peoples and local communities, as if it is one group. States can use that in their implementation of these mechanisms that are decided upon at the climate conferences, and say that they consulted the local communities, when they in fact failed to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the [nearby] Indigenous peoples, in accordance with the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (View Highlight)
• I have some examples from Greenland where we are approached by geoengineering research groups that want to test their new engineering methods on our lands and waters, which we can see will have severe impact on our ecosystems. There’s one project where they want to pour cement down in the bottom of a fjord and put up some kind of curtains that they think might be able to hold back the cold water.
  And it’s like, who knows if it’s going to work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s going to ruin the whole ecosystem of a whole area where thousands of people live off the living resources in that area. But there are also projects that we do want. The point is we just have to decide ourselves. (View Highlight)
• In loss and damage, it’s not only about loss of economy, economic things that you can count, or make up in money. It’s also loss of cultural practices. It’s loss of language. It’s loss of knowledge. These things we very often forget. (View Highlight)