To mark a year since we hosted the Indigenous Listening Session in Glasgow as part of COP26, we caught up with two of the speakers, Mindahi Bastida (Otomi-Toltec Nation, Mexico), and Cristiane Julião (Pankararu people, Pernambuco state, Brazil), to find out their hopes for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27).
We were also eager to hear from someone on the ground in Sharm El Sheikh whose community is on the frontline of climate change impact. So we asked Pakistani climate justice advocate and founder of Polluters Out Ayisha Siddiqa (who received funding from Synchronicity Earth to attend COP27) to share her COP27 insights.
“Change only happens when people commit to change”—Cristiane Julião
The intention of the Listening Sessions at COP26 was to create spaces for decision-makers, like COP organisers and attendees, to listen to the vital knowledge held by Indigenous Peoples. After taking part in a listening session, the audience has a responsibility to consider what changes they can affect and what meaningful actions they can take towards shifting the status quo.
Last year, Cristiane and Mindahi shared the necessary steps they consider urgent to meaningfully address the escalating social and environmental challenges we face. This year, their responses, along with Ayisha’s on-the-ground report, illuminate where attention and action towards these steps remain lacking.
What could COP27 organisers do differently to better support the inclusivity and meaningful participation of Indigenous Peoples?
Mindahi Bastida
“First of all, allow me to tell you that this time we have incertitude to go because we don’t have financial support, or sometimes the budgets are very limited, so we’d like to see that the organisers take into consideration that we don’t have the resources or the means to arrive at places where, because
of the COP, what is happening around is so expensive, and especially now in Sharm El Sheikh, it’s a very expensive place so, it’s not easy for us to participate. But if there would be some logistics supporting our presence that would be really nice, and not just logistics in the sense of accommodation but also for travelling, for staying at least two weeks. It’s a lot of effort and a lot of resources. Also our presence in the dialogues, in the official dialogues, and with the NGOs and other partners, that’s very important to be present. I think also there should be more inclusivity in the sense that sometimes some Indigenous leaders, the so-called Indigenous leaders, they just try to represent every single peoples around the world, but sometimes they don’t represent their (all Indigenous Peoples) interests. Some of the so-called global leaders, they are away from communities and they don’t represent the voice of communities or the local original peoples nations.”
Cristiane Julião
“The climate change committee needs to give more space for IPLCs (Indigenous Peoples and local communities) and to hear them, as they are the ones that have been suffering first-hand the impacts of climate change.
The dispute to be heard in the UN spaces is the same fight we have against capitalism and the need to maintain safeguard mechanisms such as environmental licences and studies of environmental impact. It is a fight against the way the economy is thought.
The uncontrolled deforestation and environmental degradation are in favour of the economy and progress, so it is not in the interest of many countries to deal with this.
To move forward, countries in the UNFCCC need to have this consciousness and sensibility to try to find alternatives to continue producing without having to promote deforestation at the scale it has. The land needs to be renovated, and the degraded land needs to be recovered. So, the spaces that have been destroyed have the chance to be healed, and this can be a positive regenerative process. Country members need to be sensitive to the needs of the land, and the COP organisers need to create spaces for those that represent the protection of the land to have visibility.”
What action would you most like to see as a result of COP27?
Cristiane Julião
“What I would love to see the most would be the IPLCs, including those of African inheritance, to have a seat on the decision-making table. They should be the ones negotiating with government parties about their regenerative projects to restore forests and combat climate change. They can provide insights that combine regenerative forest projects with socio-political projects incorporating the culture of the grassroots population. It would be interesting to have a direct dialogue between governments, business people, institutions, and IPLCs. This would be a proper exercise to stimulate the autonomy of peoples and territories for a more fluid dialogue with mutual respect.”
Mindahi Bastida
“I think the main action now is to stop fossil fuels – production and use. Because we are in an urgent place where we have to stop burning fossil fuels and replace them soon, right now, with alternative and clean energies. Another action is to protect biocultural sacred sites and biocultural territories of original nations and peoples, so that’s mandatory as well.”
Outside of COP27, what brings hope and where do you see real change happening?
Mindahi Bastida
“I think outside and inside should be working together always, as partnerships and collaborating, because we’re living in one world. It’s just one world, so we need to work together with governments, even the greedy people, international companies; they need to change, they have to change, because we’re living on the same planet, this is the home for all of us. So the real change is everywhere and I know that there are so many communities that are in this regenerative way of living, so for the good living paradigm to arrive everywhere, not just in the rural areas but in the cities, we really need to be educated and put plans into action.”
Cristiane Julião
“Change only happens when people commit to change. Change is only welcome when people decide to change, to do something better than what was already there. My hope lies in the people’s resilience to being empathic to IPLCs’ modes of life, our understanding of and capacity to hear Nature and our knowledge that our cure comes from Nature.”
On Tuesday 15th November, three days before the Summit drew to a close, we asked youth activist Ayisha Siddiqa to share her experience and reflections on COP27…
“This cop has been both inspiring and unfortunate. It’s the first time in 27 years that we have a youth pavilion (youth arguably are one of the most important stakeholders in the conversation about climate, as much as any nation state or enterprise). We have a space for the youth organized by the youth and have had song, art, debriefs and much more here. But many nations still don’t have youth involved in their domestic policies, let alone the negotiating space.
At the same time a 1.5 degree world is very much under threat and with the way we are moving forward, it is unachievable. Nation states have spent days arguing if and how they want to structure the process of giving loss and damage finance to communities hanging by a thread. Much of the first week was about statements, and only now the ministers are meeting. I think we won’t see money being given to communities for another 5 years and it’s heartbreaking.”
Biographies
Cristiane Julião
Cristiane is part of the Indigenous Pankararu people from the Pankararu Indigenous Land located in the Pernambuco state in northeast Brazil. She graduated in Geography from the Centro de Ensino Superior do Vale do São Francisco, in Pernambuco. She has a Master’s degree and is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where she researches national and international Indigenous legal Anthropology. Cristiane is part of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples and Organisations of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo (APOINME), and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). She is co-founder of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestrality (ANMIGA). She represents the National Council on Indigenous Policy (CNPI) in the Council for the Management of Genetic Heritage (CGen) and the Sectorial Chamber of Indigenous Peoples, Traditional Peoples and Communities and Family Farmers (Chamber of Guardians).
Thank you to Grace Souza for facilitating and translating Cristiane Julião’s contribution.
Mindahi Bastida
Mindahi is a member of the Otomi-Toltec Nation of Mexico. He’s the director of the Original Nations Program at The Fountain. He serves as the General Coordinator of the Otomi-Hñahñu Regional Council in Mexico, a caretaker of the philosophy and traditions of the Otomi people, and has been an Otomi Ritual Ceremony Officer since 1988. Born in Tultepec, Mexico, he holds a doctorate of rural development from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and is the President of the Mexico Council of Sustainable Development. Bastida is a member of the steering committee of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative, and has served as a delegate to several commissions and summits on indigenous rights and the environment. He has written extensively on the relationship between the State and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, among other topics.
Ayisha Siddiqa
Ayisha Siddiqa is a Pakistani Climate justice advocate. She is a co-founder of Polluters Out and the Executive Director of Student Affairs at Fossil Free University. On Sept 20th, 2019 she helped mobilize and lead over 300,000 students onto the streets of Manhattan demanding their governments take climate action. Her advocacy focuses on climate justice and racial justice for BIPOC.
