Indigenous peoples and climate change: addressing environmental injustice

Theresearch project starts with the consideration of Indigenous peoples as one of the most vulnerable communities to climate change impacts. Although they have not contributed in a significant manner to greenhouse gases emissions, they face discrimination in international negotiations and in national policies, while climate change impacts are affecting their fundamental human rights. Thus, the overall objective has been to understand if and how environmental justice responses are being addressed by States, at the national level, and by the international community through human rights institutions. Indigenous peoples’ issue of justice does not only relate to unequal distribution of the burden of climate change impacts, but also to systematic targeting of communities for resource extraction projects, and exclusion of their views from international negotiations and law-making. The second fundamental assertion of my research project relates to the role of Indigenous peoples as environmental stewards. Indigenous peoples generally have a close, intimate relationship with their territory. They are bearers of an ancient knowledge that aims at respecting nature and living holistically with the environment. Such knowledge has been progressively lost and disregarded in modern, westernized societies, and this oblivion and the belief in the separation between humans and nature has brought to the situation where we are now, an unprecedented environmental and climate crisis. This misrecognition of Indigenous cultures and denial of the importance of the environment for the very existence of human life, constitutes another form of injustice that will need to be addressed in the next coming decades of climate crisis and environmental crisis. The third point of my research project relates to importance of considering ecological thought in international and national climate governance. If the first two points previously made are true, the only solution to the present environmental and human rights crisis is to put the environment at the centre of our human systems, recognising Indigenous cultures as heralds of fundamental truths that will help in the restoration of more resilient environmental conditions and, ultimately, respect of human rights. Thus, the final objective of my thesis is to argue for the necessity of a paradigmatic shift in global governance by demonstrating how advancing protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights is key to realizing such shift. Because they are the last representatives of cultures intrinsically connected to nature, their voices should be heard in the midst of this global environmental crisis. Such paradigmatic shift can be realized through participatory governance of Indigenous peoples and the recognition of legal pluralism at the national and international level. This point constitutes the core hypothesis of my research.