Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change
July 26, 2009 11:08PM
From "The right to keep cold," (pdf) a commentary by W. Neil Adger, published in Environment and Planning A, 2004:
[C]limate justice needs to go beyond the confines and concerns of traditional environmental justice advocates. The US environmental justice movement has attempted to attach liability to actionöto internalize the externalities associated with imposing environmental burdens on others distanced in space and time. In its evolution, the environmental justice movement has developed new emphases on `justice as recognition' rather than `justice as fair outcome' in terms of equity of burden. Through diverse campaigns on equitable burdens of pollution and siting of hazardous installations the justice movement in the USA has had notable successes. ... I would argue, a focus on security and danger as an outcome and the definition of rights to its avoidance are required. ... We should all have a right to keep cold.
Snowchange.org is a Finland-based blog that offers indigenous views on climate change and ecology.
The preamble to a proposed "United League of Indigenous Nations Treaty," (pdf) drafted by the Special Committee on Indigenous Nations Relationships of the National Congress of American Indians (USA), 2006:
We the Indigenous Nations and Peoples of the Pacific Rim hereby pledge mutual recognition of our inherent rights and power to govern ourselves and our ancestral homelands and traditional territories. Each signatory nation, having provided evidence that their respective governing body has taken action in accordance with their own custom, law and or tradition to knowingly agree to and adopt the terms of this treaty, hereby establishes the political, social, cultural and economic relations contemplated herein.
