Indigenous Peoples call for climate change compensation
Leaders at COP29 urged to ‘significantly’ increase funding given directly to groups conserving precious resources and ecosystems.
More than 50 Indigenous leaders, representing 137 communities, have called on world leaders to compensate them for the loss and damages they have incurred because of climate change.
At a meeting of the International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP) in Peru in June, representatives of mountain communities in Peru, Bolivia and China, and semi arid communities in Kenya, reaffirmed the importance of their ancestral agricultural traditions, medicinal practices and the global environmental value of their home territories.
Mountain Indigenous Peoples are at the front line of climate change and among the worst impacted even though they have contributed little to greenhouse gas emissions.
The crisis is exacerbating Indigenous rights violations, including the economic and non-economic losses to their territories, cultures and ways of life.
The loss and damage fund of the UNFCCC established at COP28 in December 2023 was designed to help lower-income countries vulnerable to climate change repair destruction caused by global heating.
However, INMIP has now urged leaders at the upcoming UNFCCC COP29 and CBD COP16 summits to compensate its member communities directly and appropriately, given the international importance of the ecosystems they conserve, and of the rich agrobiodiversity they have created and cultivated over generations.
“There is no more land”
Ricardina Pacco, a Quechua farmer from the Potato Park genetic reserve in Peru, said: “In the Potato Park we conserve nearly 1,400 native potato varieties. Because the soil is getting warmer and pests are increasing, we have to keep moving our potatoes up the mountain. Now many of our potato varieties have reached the mountain top, beyond which there is no more land.”
INMIP is also calling for significant additional finance to support the work of its community members to protect biodiversity in their home regions and territories, while pushing for a greater recognition and protection of their role as stewards of nature.
Victor Oblitas, of the Barter and Maize Park in Peru, added: “Indigenous Peoples do a lot more than many may realise to preserve the ecosystems that keep billions fed and watered, thanks to their spiritual relationships with the land.
“The places we live in and look after are hotspots for biodiversity, which is the foundation of societies and agricultural systems that can resist climate change.
“However, we are being disproportionately hurt by rising temperatures despite having done nothing to cause them. World leaders must take this problem seriously by significantly increasing climate and biodiversity financing to Indigenous Peoples, and acting to protect our interlinked biological and cultural heritage and territorial rights.”
Prevention better than a cure
However, for mountain Indigenous Peoples monetary compensation after the fact cannot solve the crises they face on its own.
Alejandro Argumedo, INMIP’s international coordinator, said: “Prevention is better than cure.
“Among the problems we face is growing pressure from extractive industries and false solutions like carbon offsetting that are grabbing our lands while polluting our territories and water. The international community must take this outrage seriously and address it.
“Monetary compensation can do a lot, but it can't buy us back sacred land, rivers or lakes, heritage crop species, or Indigenous knowledge, culture, language and spirituality if we lose them.”
INMIP has also urged world governments to tackle the root cause of climate change by slashing greenhouse gas emissions.
The group’s challenge to the international community is set out in the new Huaran Declaration.