BY TOM B.K GOLDTOOTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INDIGENOUS, ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK

On Saturday morning, I met with Mayan elders this region called Zona Maya [Maya territories] who expressed their concerns about their indigenous rights. This circle of Mayan elders sent by their communities worked very hard to finalize their own vision statement. That included the rejection of REDD.

The Mayan elders expressed that it is unethical and not in accordance to their traditions and ancestral ways to participate in the REDD program that would pay themmoney in an offset program that allows polluters to continue to pollute, resulting in a program that would cause the warming of the Mother Earth and not for their stewardship of their forests.

Indigenous Peoples are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change around the world. Sea ice in Greenland and the Arctic region are melting faster than what previous scientists had predicted.

Our traditional foods are diminishing, our waterways and sea ice habitats are disappearing, the rains that sustain us are drying up, and our homelands are falling into the rising seas. The situation is dire and urgent.

Indigenous Peoples demand a change in the models of production and consumption that produce climate change, as well as decisive action for real solutions by State Parties at this session. The threats to our survival and the violations of our internationally-recognized human rights as a result of climate change are increasing on a daily basis. Market-based mitigation strategies such as the Clean Development Mechanism and the carbon forest offsets of REDD/REDD plus, further threaten our human rights, including our right to free prior and informed consent among many others. Our land and territories, food sovereignty, biodiversity, cultural practices and traditional life ways are being placed in further jeopardy, and we reject these false solutions.

Our indigenous organization, the Indigenous Environmental Network is very concerned with the Chairman’s negotiatingtext of the LCA. We are extremely alarmed by the unilateral removal of the elements of the Cochabamba People’s Agreement and deletion of language that had been submitted in previous negotiating text by the Plurinational State of Bolivia for governments of the world to recognize the rights of Mother Earth. Cochabamba emphasized the recognition of human rights. Its removal from the negotiating text sends an unfortunate signal about what we can expect from this COP.

Equally alarming are signals within the Chairman’s text reflecting the bias to move forward with the Copenhagen Accord as a legitimate path for parties of this UN conference. The global indigenous caucus within the COP16 oppose the Copenhagen Accord.

For all these reasons, a central concern of Indigenous Peoples in all aspects ofthe work to be carried out at COP 16 is the obligation to ensure that the rights of Indigenous Peoples in all countries are respected, upheld and recognized in all final texts and agreements, consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international human rights norms and standards.

In closing, we call upon the Parties of this COP to adopt strong and concrete agreements here to produce real solutions that reduce emissions to 300 PPM while also making a firm commitment to protect our human rights. Our survival is in the balance. Our responsibility to our Peoples, our future generations, our Sacred Mother the Earth and to each other as brothers and sisters of the human family, requires and demands immediate and decisive action.

Tom Goldtooth is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, representing an international organization working on the rights of indigenous peoples and environmental and climate justice. He is also a member of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, which is the global indigenous caucus within the UNFCCC.