Decolonizing Climate Activism: The Need to Recognize Indigenous Knowledge

Out of the 40,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries who attended the November United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, very few were indigenous leaders and activists, many of whom are experts at conservation and regeneration.

The exclusion of indigenous people underscores what Rab Ferguson, the author of Landfill Mountains, says is white privilege within the climate movement. The media has been increasingly covering climate disasters across the globe, yet the prevailing narrative of the climate crisis is that it is a ticking doomsday clock that has yet to ring. Why do we latch on to this narrative when islands like Kale, in the Solomon Islands, have been entirely submerged under water, and climate change has been linked to five million deaths per year?

“It is white privilege to describe climate change as a problem of the future,” Ferguson writes in Reader’s Digest.

He points to a list from the United Nations of what indigenous people have had to endure during the climate crisis. In the Kalahari Desert, for example, indigenous people are forced to rely on the government for basic needs like water as vegetation declines with global warming. In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, changing weather and urbanization has led to a mass starvation of reindeer, which the culture and economy of the Saami communities depend upon.

The disparity of suffering from the climate crisis makes clear the importance of recognizing what is known as the Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA). The youth-led Fridays for Future climate movement explains that MAPA refers to all the territories in the Global South, as well as to marginalized people — such as people of color, women, and LGBTQIA individuals.

Recognizing how different communities intersect is a necessary step toward decolonizing and fixing the environmental racism that ravages the developing world. It would also help shift thinking away from the capitalistic culture of placing profit over people, which fuels climate injustice.

In prioritizing MAPA, we also need to work toward building a climate movement that centers and amplifies the voices of indigenous people. Western science, which has formed and continues to occupy the forefront of the climate movement, is rooted in Eurocentric and Judeo-Christian belief structures that emphasize a distinct separation of “man” and “nature.” In comparison to this anthropocentric worldview, indigenous beliefs and cultures are based on an eco-centric way of life, focusing on the oneness of nature, of which humanity forms a part.

Untapped expertise

Indigenous communities have deep collective histories of being forced to adapt to environmental change — while suffering the disruptions of historic and ongoing practices of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization — making their knowledge a reservoir of climate solutions.

The Afar pastoralists in northeastern Ethiopia are able to predict weather and climate patterns by drawing on their connection with livestock, insects, birds, trees, and wildlife. Another example of the extent of indigenous intelligence is highlighted by the Agroforestry Research Project in Kenya: When indigenous women were included in the project, it helped improve soil management and drought/famine survival, and disseminate a sustainable and effective understanding of agroforestry.

Unfortunately, even when indigenous knowledge is recognized as valuable, it is often reduced to being an accessory to Western science and regarded as “complementary” knowledge. The 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment — produced by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organization — describes the knowledge offered by indigenous Arctic groups as providing a “human dimension” to scientists’ calculation of impacts of climate change. Across the Arctic, indigenous comprehension of the climate crisis continues to be referred to as “traditional ecological knowledge.” Some people argue that this kind of integration of indigenous intelligence serves the sole purpose of strengthening Western science. Yet an intimate knowledge of the local spatial terrain can provide more data than is sometimes possible using Western scientific methods.

Abigail Murmu, an Adivasi, or indigenous, activist from Jharkhand in India who works in development, highlights the power of indigenous expertise by citing a 2019 report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The report points to evidence that the lands managed and protected by indigenous communities emit at least 73 percent less carbon than lands managed by other communities.

“And this,” Murmu said, “is despite not using any Western scientific approaches, and only the traditional knowledge that we have derived from centuries of living sustainably.”

Indigenous activists, vilified

About 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity is inhabited and protected by indigenous people. But Arjun Mehar, an Adivasi activist and writer based in Rajasthan, India, compares that huge percentage with the lack of representation, and even persecution, of indigenous activists.

“Indigenous activists who are fighting on the ground to save the environment barely receive any attention,” he said. “In India, they are branded ‘Naxalites’ [left-wing extremists] and kept in jails for years. We cannot forget the names like Bari Pidikaka, Kuni Sikaka, Hidme Markam, Soni Sori, Sudha Bhardwaj, and Father Stan Swamy, who endured government repression to fight to save their environment.”

Amid the efforts to bridge the gap between climate science and indigenous know-how, indigenous activists face threats to their lives. Global Witness reports that, globally, there have been 227 land and environmental activists murdered in 2021. One-third of the attacks were targeted at indigenous communities, who only make up 5 percent of the population. The group also reports that only 10 percent of environmental defenders’ murderers are ever brought to justice.

Environmental concerns and climate activism are often interpreted as barriers to economic growth. On top of that, officials themselves are sometimes allied with the very private industries that land defenders oppose. In India, the Adani Mining company has been violating the rights of Adivasis and destroying precious environmental resources in their pursuit of coal mining. The government sold the company blocks of land in the middle of vast forests that Adivasis depend on for their livelihoods.

Mehar talks about the perilous conditions in which climate activists, particularly indigenous ones, work: “When profit-minded people and governments destroy forests in the name of mineral wealth and so called ‘development,’ tribal communities are not only displaced from the forests but also lose their language, culture, and way of life.

“The most shameful part is that all this happens at the behest of people in positions of power and is sponsored by government machinery.”

At his address in Glasgow, Modi discussed panchamrit, or five gifts that India will share with the world in its commitments to climate mitigation. So far, however, it seems that Modi, like so many leaders around the world, is not about to include the critical indigenous knowledge of the environment as one of those gifts.