The Sámi People have learned to be on alert when the term “green transition” is mentioned. We see that it is
a new name for old models of action. We are used to others wanting us to step aside so that they can fulfil
their needs at our expense. Mining and industry projects are usually very open about being for-profit
business ventures. In the wake of the “green transition”, however, we see a development where these same
kinds of ventures are suddenly being sold to us as a service to humanity. The “green transition” becomes a
way to talk about for-profit business as something that is supposedly morally good and justified and how
these resources are essential for safeguarding a sustainable future. This portrayal is very difficult to stand
against or even criticize.
The Sámi People are heavily affected by the climate crisis, and we know our knowledge is vital to mitigating
the effects of the climate crisis in our lands. When projects labelled as “green transition” seek access to our
lands, they often make it seem as though Sámi resisting these projects are opposing climate solutions. We
do not oppose climate solutions. We want to safeguard our lands and combat climate change. That is exactly
why we demand space to present our own solutions for our people and our lands. We know that the “green
transition” must be a just transition.
This report and the collaboration that has led to it is a promising step forward in bringing crucial awareness
to Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the Nordic countries. The report sheds light on how colonialism develops: it
does not end with a state simply controlling and exploiting the land. Rather, colonialism is a continuous
process that keeps inventing new ways to re-colonize the land. As Indigenous People, we must believe that
this cycle can be broken and that there is another way for us to coexist and collaborate. The recommendations in this report set forth a path to a better future.
‘Green colonialism’: Indigenous world leaders warn over west’s climate strategy
UN summit in New York hears how resources needed for sustainable energy threaten Indigenous land and people
“As countries scramble to uphold pledges to keep global warming to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels by 2030, big business and government are latching on to environmentally driven projects such as mineral needs or wind power that are usurping the rights of Indigenous peoples – from the American south-west to the Arctic and the Serengeti in Africa.
“Brian Mason, chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian reservation in Nevada said that the 70 or so lithium mining applications targeting Paiute lands have come without free, prior and informed consent – what is considered the cornerstone of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He described the lithium extraction efforts as being on a ‘fast track’ to supply the Biden administration’s net-zero strategy to create a domestic supply of EVs. ‘It’s kinda just being rammed down our throats,’ he said. ‘At the cost of Indigenous peoples once again.’
“During a special panel discussion, Edward Parokwa, executive director of the Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organization (Pingo’s Forum), said a mass migration has ensued of thousands of Maasai violently displaced from their Tanzania homelands to make way for a luxury game reserve – and under suspicions and fear of mobile phone surveillance by the United Arab Emirates. A UAE-based company is believed to be behind the big game hunting operation. ‘And it’s happening in the name of conservation,’ Parokwa said.”
UN summit in New York hears how resources needed for sustainable energy threaten Indigenous land and people
World Indigenous leaders meeting this week at an annual UN summit have warned that the west’s climate strategy risks the exploitation of Indigenous territories, resources and people.
New and emerging threats about the transition to a greener economy, including mineral mining, were at the forefront of debate as hundreds of Indigenous chiefs, presidents, chairmen and delegates gathered at the 22nd United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
“It is common to hear the expression to ‘leave no one behind’. But perhaps those who are leading are not on the right path,” the forum’s chairman, Dario Mejía Montalvo, told delegates on Monday as the 12-day summit opened in New York in the first full convening since the pandemic outbreak.
The longtime advocacy group, Cultural Survival, in partnership with other organizations, highlighted how mining for minerals such as nickel, lithium, cobalt and copper – the resources needed to support products like electric car batteries – are presenting conflicts in tribal communities in the United States and around the world.
As countries scramble to uphold pledges to keep global warming to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels by 2030, big business and government are latching on to environmentally driven projects such as mineral needs or wind power that are usurping the rights of Indigenous peoples – from the American south-west to the Arctic and the Serengeti in Africa.
Brian Mason, chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian reservation in Nevada said that the 70 or so lithium mining applications targeting Paiute lands have come without free, prior and informed consent – what is considered the cornerstone of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He described the lithium extraction efforts as being on a “fast track” to supply the Biden administration’s net-zero strategy to create a domestic supply of EVs . “It’s kinda just being rammed down our throats,” he said. “At the cost of Indigenous peoples once again.”
Gunn-Britt Retter of the Saami Council, an organization representing the Sami peoples of Finland, Russia, Norway and Sweden, said she had been raising awareness about what she calls the “green colonialism” driving harmful sustainability projects on Sami and Indigenous lands. The most recent example has been the Fosen onshore windfarm that was built despite a supreme court ruling in Norway in defense of Sami reindeer herding grounds.
“They look to us to carry the heaviest burden and it’s a disproportionate part of the burden,” she said of Indigenous peoples caught in the middle of a climate conundrum. “We need to reduce CO2 emissions globally, and we need to seek alternative energy sources, but we also need to protect the Indigenous cultures because we are the guardians of nature, which is part of the solution.”
Mejía Montalvo, who belongs to the Zenú peoples of San Andrés Sotavento in Colombia, said global climate talks have failed to properly include Indigenous peoples, yet at the same time, such dialogue has relied on a well of Indigenous knowledge systems to imagine future climate goals. “The issue of climate change and biodiversity cannot be resolved without the real and effective participation of Indigenous peoples.”
He urged the 193 member states affiliated with the UN, as well as its international governing bodies, to set a quota for actions that guarantee Indigenous peoples can take part in decisions affecting our planet, and in a way that puts them “on equal footing” with states – meaning, voting power, which Indigenous peoples lack.
The most recent example of the disparity came last fall in the historic “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries reached at Cop27 in Egypt. Indigenous peoples lacked explicit reference in the agreement, despite many world leaders, including the US president, Joe Biden, acknowledging the importance of Indigenous peoples in mitigating and adapting to climate change.
But there has been progress. The rights-based Paris agreement within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the environmental treaty to combat the climate crisis – has provided a rare opportunity for formal Indigenous participation in the creation of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples’ Platform (LCIPP). The constituent body held its first meeting as a recognized working group in 2019, and engaged in dialogue with the Cop presidency last year in Sharm El-Sheikh.
Of the short cast of international leaders who spoke at the start of the global event on Monday was the first ever appearance by a UN secretary general, António Guterres, at a permanent forum opening ceremony. Also present was Deb Haaland, US interior secretary and tribal citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna, who received a standing ovation following her remarks where she acknowledged a litany of historic injustices against Indigenous peoples and a collective need to heal, saying Indigenous peoples must be brought into the fold in global human rights decision-making.
Lahela Mattos of Ka’Lāhui Hawai’i and a representative of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, urged the permanent forum chair to work with UN agencies like the World Health Organization to develop and implement comprehensive policies to better protect the safety of Indigenous women and girls as a way to protect the planet. “The destruction of and violence committed against our Earth Mother perpetuates, violence against Indigenous peoples, specifically Indigenous women who are protectors and bearers of life on this planet.”
The recommendation regarding “environmental violence” on Indigenous women and girls was first featured in a recent human rights treaty body outcome and represents one of the first fundamental links between human rights abuses and environmental catastrophe – a connection that most stakeholders grappling with the climate crisis have yet to make.
“Let us not forget that climate is the language of Mother Earth,” said Mejía Montalvo.
At COP26, developed-world governments are working to keep the global south poor.
NOVEMBER 3, 2021, 5:56 PM
With natural gas prices at record highs in Europe, Norway is raking it in. The country is Europe’s second-largest gas supplier after Russia—and has just agreed to increase natural gas exports by 2 billion cubic meters to alleviate the continent’s acute energy shortage. Its neighbors, such as Britain, are grateful for every dollop of gas as winter approaches.
Yet even as wealthy Norwegians count their kroners thanks to rising prices and booming exports, their government is working hard to stop some of the world’s poorest countries from producing their own natural gas. Along with seven other Nordic and Baltic countries, Norway has been lobbying the World Bank to stop all financing of natural gas projects in Africa and elsewhere as soon as 2025—and until then only in “exceptional circumstances,” as an unpublished statement by the group, seen by Foreign Policy, details. At COP26, 20 countries went even further, pledging to stop all funding for overseas fossil fuel projects beginning next year. Instead, the Nordic and Baltic countries suggest, the World Bank should finance clean energy solutions in the developing world “such as green hydrogen and smart micro-grid networks.”
The idea that some of the poorest people on Earth will be using green hydrogen—possibly the most complex and expensive energy technology that exists—and building out “smart micro-grid networks” in just a few years at anywhere near the scale required is absurd. Not even solar energy or wind power—if it could be built out quickly enough—could fuel development in the global south without backup power using fossil fuels, of which gas is the cleanest by far. In sub-Saharan Africa, which has large gas fields offshore and includes many of the world’s poorest countries, a ban on financing gas projects would practically end support for the critical energy infrastructure necessary to support economic development and raise living standards—including electricity for homes, schools, and factories; industrial heat for producing cement and steel; the carbon dioxide that is an essential component of synthetic fertilizer; and liquefied gas for transportation and cooking fuel.
None of this is lost on the countries lobbying the World Bank: They acknowledge the need for fossil fuel-generated power to backstop weather-dependent wind and solar. They also acknowledge the benefits of clean stoves. And when the issue is its own oil and gas, Norway rejects restrictions. Ahead of COP26, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store argued that future oil and gas drilling will be critical to a transition to renewable energy. In other words: Norway knows gas is needed yet doesn’t want poor countries to produce that gas.
That last example makes perfectly clear what Norway’s fight against natural gas means for the world’s poor. About 3.8 million people die prematurely each year from the effects of indoor air pollution, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of these deaths occur among the 2.6 billion people in poor countries who still burn wood, coal, charcoal, or animal dung indoors for cooking. Women and children doing household chores are particularly exposed to this toxic smoke, which penetrates deep into the lungs. The switch to bottled cooking gas—promoted on a large scale by India, China, and the United Nations—is saving countless lives in the developing world. That’s one reason why the U.N.—where developing countries have a stronger voice than in Oslo, Washington, or Berlin—lists natural gas among clean energy sources and is promoting the switch to cooking gas in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, which call for global access to affordable clean energy.
More than 400 million people in Africa live on less than $2 per day. Their needs are too great to be met solely with current green energy technologies, which are also too expensive for these governments’ finances. Costly subsidies can be borne in wealthier countries, which are responsible for the great majority of the world’s past and present carbon emissions. Zero-carbon grids exist almost nowhere in the world, with Iceland the main exception. Everywhere else, fossil fuel electricity generation is still needed to balance out weather-dependent wind and solar. Low-cost, low-carbon alternatives aren’t yet available when it comes to the production of fertilizer, cement, and steel.
Norway is effectively telling Africa: We’ll stay rich, keep you from developing, and send some charity your way as long as you keep your emissions down. Let’s call a spade a spade: Norway is advancing the green version of colonialism. And the problem isn’t just Norway. It’s the rich world telling the global south to stay poor and stop developing, which under no scenario is possible without a vast increase in energy use. Instead, development aid will be repackaged as climate-related transfers, keeping the global south dependent. The accelerated transition to renewable energy being pushed on Africa by developed countries and their aid agencies, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni wrote in an op-ed last month, “stands to forestall Africa’s attempts to rise out of poverty.”
Many who support restrictions on poor countries do so, ironically, in the name of climate justice, rightly noting the global poor are most at risk from climate impacts. Yet how will the global poor become more resilient to extreme weather events and other effects of climate change if not through development? The global poor are most at risk because they cannot afford adaptation measures such as air conditioning and irrigation.
Beyond electricity, fossil fuels are even more critical to Africa’s development. Modern agriculture—which the continent needs to feed its population and offer rural youth a better future than subsistence farming—is heavily reliant on oil and gas. Synthetic fertilizer to improve yields is most efficiently produced with natural gas. Road and building construction is energy-intensive, as is cold storage for food and pharmaceuticals. The transportation sector remains almost entirely dependent on oil and gas. Failing to be honest about the energy needs of the developing world is inhumane, uncompassionate, and immoral.Norway is the most fossil fuel-dependent rich country in the world. Crude oil and natural gas account for 41 percent of exports, 14 percent of GDP, 14 percent of government revenues, and between 6 and 7 percent of employment. Norway has the largest hydrocarbon reserves in Europe and is the world’s third-largest exporter of natural gas. It is effectively telling Africa: We’ll stay rich, keep you from developing, and send some charity your way as long as you keep your emissions down.
The hypocrisy extends to other countries, of course. U.S. President Joe Biden has set lofty targets but just called on major energy suppliers to ramp up production to meet U.S. demand for oil. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has outlined ambitious climate goals while giving Germans plenty of time—almost 20 years—to exit from coal.
Meanwhile, more than 1 billion people in 48 sub-Saharan African countries are responsible for less than 1 percent of cumulative global carbon emissions. Even if those nations tripled electricity generation solely with natural gas—an unlikely outcome given Africa’s renewable resources, such as hydroelectric power—global emissions would only increase by about 1 percent. Denying these 1 billon people access to more electricity, on the other hand, makes it much more likely they will remain poor and hence more vulnerable to the warming that rich countries are overwhelmingly responsible for.
Rich countries such as Norway claim they are committed to equitable and sustainable development. Instead of blocking it, they should make big investments in clean technology and infrastructure to support poor countries. They need to stop the easy slogans and be judicious about how and when to end support for fossil fuels, taking the social and economic consequences into account. They should enable the financing of natural gas projects for at least the next two decades so that poor countries can lift themselves out of poverty. Whatever they do, they should not pursue climate ambitions while losing sight of social justice, which will remain an empty phrase if the global south doesn’t have the energy resources to raise incomes, resilience, and quality of life.The Nordics and other rich countries are betting on achieving their climate ambitions without the need for harder-edged policies at home. It is simply too tempting for leaders of rich countries—including those who produce plenty of oil and gas—to impose restrictions on others. Pursuing climate ambitions on the backs of the poorest people in the world is not just hypocritical—it is immoral, unjust, and green colonialism at its worst.
[photograph by Ali Kazal on Unsplash of the dedication to Walt Whitman carved into Mazinaw Rock, with canoeists visible paddling in the background]
Privilege is the advantage of wealth and power. It is the rights, immunity, and benefits that someone holds. Your privilege is everything that you don’t have to worry about that someone else does. It’s not being tailed around an outdoor supply store by a clerk who’s slapped a negative stereotype on you because you look black, or indigenous, or poor. It’s not having to worry about how you’re going to get home. It’s not being spoken over, for, or down to. It’s feeling like you don’t have anything on the line when someone talks about race. It’s everything that your position in society buys you, and everything that you get to do that someone else doesn’t, because of their position.
Privilege shapes who nature interpretation is done by and who benefits from it.
It’s not an accident that so much of the imagery of people in nature features white people. It’s not an accident that in Canada so much more land is dedicated to national and provincial parks in the north than the south; by and large Canada’s parks systems are comprised of less agriculturally desirable land, while the desirable agricultural land has largely been colonized by settlers.
1885 saw the founding of Canada’s first national park, Banff, and its superintendent seeking the exclusion of indigenous people from it [1,2]. As members of Keeseekoowenin Ojibwa band left Riding Mountain National Park for a reserve in 1936 they saw smoke rising from the fires that park wardens set to their barns and houses to keep them from coming back [1]. The Algonquin people were forced out of Algonquin Park [2]. It has been very clear, historically, that not all people are welcome within Canada’s parks.
Black people share a similar history of white people forcing them from their lands, during the slave trade and after. In Forsyth County, Georgia there were several years of effort by white people, beginning in 1912 when a lynching occurred, to force black people to leave [3]. In 1912 there were 41 black landowners, in 1913 there were 31, and in 1918 none were listed in the tax records; the black population dropped from 1,098 in 1910 to 30 in 1920 [3]. It’s not an accident that the term “urban” has been used as a synonym for “black”, and it is hardly surprising that some do not feel welcome in “nature”, today.
Systemic racism has fueled diversity gaps in nature interpretation. It has created access barriers, to physical sites and to educational opportunities. It has defined the lens through which nature interpretation is permitted to occur and facilitated land theft in the name of ecological conservation as part of a “green colonialism” [2] that has been enabled by a colonial view of “nature” and “wilderness” that excludes humanity.
Mazinaw Rock in Bon Echo Provincial Park features 300-1000 year old indigenous pictographs [4] and, (pictured above) carved into the rock in 1919, a massively large dedication to the democratic ideals of Walt Whitman. It feels like an apt metaphor for the colonial lens that has shaped and directed nature interpretation.
Green colonialism captures a legitimate moral intuition, but it is not what Marxism calls a ‘historically determinate’ theoretical concept. It conflates historically distinct forms of domination and, in doing so, obscures the specificity of a contemporary imperialism operating through the hierarchical circuits of global capital, and not through colonial administration. The corporate-led “ecological” restructuring of capitalism—its turn toward “green” technologies, “sustainable” finance, and carbon markets—must therefore be understood as a mutation within imperialism, not as a revival of colonialism. What we confront today is not a new colonial order but an imperial order in green clothes; an attempt to start a new cycle of accumulation based on a green agenda in which the periphery continues to supply cheap labor-power, primary resources, semi-finished products, and territories for the reproduction of the capital relations and the imperial mode of living in the core.
