REDD+ (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries), an approach originally developed within the UN climate negotiations as a mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, has gradually evolved into a complex system involving private developers, conservation NGOs, certification bodies, financial intermediaries and state agencies.

This expansion is unfolding within a profoundly unequal global political economy. While international institutions warn of a massive “climate finance gap”, fossil fuel subsidies still amount to trillions of dollars annually, and wealthy countries continue to fall short of their historical responsibility and climate finance commitments. Within this context, carbon markets are promoted as a way to “mobilise private finance” without challenging the economic structures driving the climate crisis in the first place.

For Indigenous Peoples, the implications are enormous. Indigenous Peoples collectively steward vast areas of the world’s remaining biodiversity and carbon-rich ecosystems. Research consistently shows that forests under Indigenous governance tend to experience lower rates of deforestation and better ecological outcomes than state-managed protected areas. However, in many countries, Indigenous land rights, including customary land rights, remain weak, incomplete or entirely unrecognised. This creates the conditions for governments and private actors to claim authority over “forest carbon” while bypassing Indigenous Peoples’ governance and rights over their land and territories.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement risks exacerbating this harm by allowing governments and private actors to generate jurisdictional carbon credits across vast territories without first guaranteeing the land rights of Indigenous Peoples, recognizing their customary institutions and authorities, or ensuring meaningful consent..

From Safeguards to Dispossession

While international safeguards are supposed to protect Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the context of carbon projects, in practice, these protections are frequently weak, non-binding or easily circumvented. In multiple regions, Indigenous Peoples’ organisations report recurring patterns: incomprehensible contracts, rushed consultation processes, unequal access to information, uninformed decisions, and growing restrictions over customary land tenure.

Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is often reduced to a procedural formality or a simple verification requirement. Communities are approached through isolated meetings, technical presentations, or consultations conducted in foreign languages and under significant pressure. Contracts frequently involve highly complex legal and financial arrangements spanning decades, yet communities receive little independent legal or technical support to assess the long-term implications. This information gap leaves room for intermediaries — sometimes described as carbon pirates or cowboys — to secure exploitative contracts.

In many cases, the asymmetry of knowledge and power is profound. Carbon project developers, intermediaries, and certification bodies operate with specialised expertise, legal teams, and access to international finance. Communities, by contrast, are often compelled to make decisions about abstract financial instruments and future territorial-use obligations with limited information about pricing structures, contractual risks, or revenue distribution. The result is an environment in which Indigenous Peoples’ territories become incorporated into volatile global carbon markets without the rights-holders exercising informed and meaningful engagement over the process.

REDD+ pilot projects in sub-Saharan Africa have imposed strict controls on shifting cultivation and forest grazing, while communities report that conservation benefits fail to offset lost livelihoods, leading many to disengage.

REDD+ pilot projects in sub-Saharan Africa have imposed strict controls on shifting cultivation and forest grazing.

Restrictions imposed in the name of carbon conservation impact practices such as shifting cultivation, grazing, hunting, gathering or small-scale forest use. In some contexts, carbon projects replicate old models of “fortress conservation,” in which Indigenous people’s presence is viewed as a threat to environmental protection. For instance, REDD+ pilot projects in sub-Saharan Africa have imposed strict controls on shifting cultivation and forest grazing, while communities report that conservation benefits fail to offset lost livelihoods, leading many to withdraw from these programs. Research into a failed REDD+ initiative in Tanzania found that “wilderness” narratives were used to justify coercive enforcement, forced evictions, and the treatment of Indigenous residents as intruders in their own territories. In the Colombian Amazon, carbon offsetting has similarly been described as a “subtle green grab” that creates “de facto enclosures” on Indigenous lands and disciplines forest communities.

Furthermore, carbon projects reshape local governance systems, exacerbate internal inequalities and generate conflicts regarding representation, benefit-sharing and territorial authority. Benefit-sharing is often unclear, delayed, and minimal, with communities receiving only a small fraction of total revenues. Women, youth and traditional authorities are frequently excluded from negotiations — despite bearing much of the social and environmental burden — while project revenues, when they do materialize, may be captured by local elites or external intermediaries. As the “carbon rights” or the benefit share is often defined together with the land ownership, the carbon market has become another weapon for eliminating customary land rights of Indigenous Peoples due to the non-recognition of customary land rights by many governments. Recurring demands have included access to culturally appropriate and translated information, as well as independent facilitation of FPIC processes.

Phantom Credits and the Logic of Offsetting

Investigations into voluntary carbon markets have found that large numbers of forest-based credits — particularly within REDD+ schemes — are effectively “phantom credits”: credits issued for emissions reductions that either did not occur or cannot be reliably verified. Inflated baselines, weak additionality rules and the displacement of deforestation from one area to another undermine claims that these projects generate meaningful climate mitigation. Yet, these same credits are routinely used by major corporations to support “net zero” claims while they continue fossil fuel extraction and high-emission business models. Therefore, carbon offsetting does not function not as a pathway beyond fossil fuels, but rather as a mechanism that allows emissions to continue elsewhere.

This contradiction highlights one of the central problems of carbon markets. There is simply not enough land on Earth to offset current levels of fossil fuel consumption while maintaining existing patterns of extraction and economic growth. The idea that ongoing emissions in the Global North can be balanced indefinitely through conservation projects in the Global South rests on increasingly unsustainable ecological assumptions.

The problem is also epistemic. Carbon markets benefit systems of measurement, verification and monitoring rooted in technocratic and financial logics: satellite imagery, biomass calculations, carbon accounting methodologies and digital registries.

The problem is also epistemic. Carbon markets benefit systems of measurement, verification and monitoring rooted in technocratic and financial logics.

For many Indigenous Peoples, this is not merely a technical failure but a continuation of colonial relations. Territories in the Global South become spaces tasked with absorbing the environmental costs of industrial economies – i.e., greenhouse gas emissions – generated elsewhere. Forests are reduced to carbon stocks registered in distant databases, while Indigenous Peoples are expected to shoulder the burden of climate mitigation for economies that remain dependent on oil, gas and mining.

The problem is also epistemological. Carbon markets benefit and prioritize systems of measurement, verification and monitoring rooted in technocratic and financial logics: satellite imagery, biomass calculations, carbon accounting methodologies and digital registries. These frameworks often marginalise Indigenous conceptions of territory grounded in reciprocity, relationality and responsibilities between human and non-human life.

Between Rejection and Strategic Engagement

Indigenous Peoples’ responses to carbon markets are neither uniform nor static. In various regions, numerous organisations and territorial movements reject carbon markets outright, arguing that they are false solutions that commodify nature while allowing major polluters to avoid meaningful emissions reductions at source.

At the same time, the reality on the ground is often more complex. Carbon markets are already expanding rapidly across Indigenous Peoples’ territories, frequently in contexts marked by simultaneous pressures from mining, agribusiness, logging, infrastructure expansion, and organised crime such as drug trafficking. For some communities, participation in carbon projects emerges not from endorsement, but rather from the need to navigate an increasingly restrictive political and economic environment.

Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are demanding stronger territorial protections, transparent contracts, independent legal support, community-controlled benefit-sharing mechanisms and prior consultation processes designed according to Indigenous Peoples’ governance systems.

Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are demanding stronger territorial protections, transparent contracts, independent legal support, community-controlled benefit-sharing mechanisms and prior consultation processes.

In certain cases, communities view carbon initiatives as a lesser threat compared to other forms of extractive development. Others seek to engage strategically in order to secure territorial recognition, strengthen collective governance or gain leverage within negotiations that are likely to proceed regardless of Indigenous Peoples’ opposition. In this sense, participation may function less as acceptance than as a strategy of defence and political survival.

This has given rise to forms of cautious, rights-based engagement focused on strengthening Indigenous Peoples’ decision-making power rather than legitimising carbon markets themselves. Across various regions, Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are demanding stronger territorial protections, transparent contracts, independent legal support, community-controlled benefit-sharing mechanisms and consultation processes designed according to Indigenous Peoples’ governance systems rather than project timelines.

Beyond Carbon Markets

Despite the diversity of Indigenous Peoples’ positions on carbon markets, one demand remains constant across contexts: self-determination. Whether communities choose rejection, negotiation, or selective engagement, the central issue is the right of Indigenous Peoples to determine what happens within their territories according to their own institutions, knowledge systems and political priorities. Secure collective land tenure must be a precondition for any legitimate form of engagement.

Increasingly,Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are advancing alternative approaches centred on territorial rights, direct access to climate finance and non-market forms of climate action. These proposals emphasise Indigenous governance and protocols, collective land rights, food sovereignty, ecological restoration and the defence of living territories.

The expansion of carbon markets suggests that the global economy is still searching for ways to manage the climate crisis without confronting the structures that produced it in the first place. Indigenous critiques expose the limits of that approach.

The expansion of carbon markets suggests that the global economy is still searching for ways to manage the climate crisis without confronting the structures that produced it in the first place.

These approaches also challenge the broader political economy underpinning carbon markets. Addressing climate change requires far more than new financial instruments. It demands a radical structural transformation of society and the economy, facilitating a rapid fossil fuel phase-out, strict regulation of extractive industries and supply chains linked to deforestation, cancellation of illegitimate debts, and large-scale public investment in Indigenous and community-led initiatives.

The expansion of carbon markets suggests that the global economy continues to seek ways to manage the climate crisis without confronting the structures that created it in the first place. Indigenous critiques expose the limits of that approach. They remind us that forests are not simply carbon reservoirs, and that climate justice cannot be reduced to accounting exercises conducted in distant financial centres.

The post Carbon Markets and Indigenous Peoples: Between False Solutions and Forced Choices appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

On the why, we are often told these days that the main obstacle to addressing the biodiversity crisis is a lack of funding for nature, that this funding gap is too great for governments alone to be able to close, that we consequently need to reorient private capital, and that the best way to do this would be via the creation of a financial market that trades in biodiversity credits. I find this narrative to be debatable and politically biased.

The False Funding Gap Narrative

First, the alleged US$700bn annual funding gap could easily be closed by redirecting a fraction of the existing US$1,700bn annual subsidies to harmful activities. This means that the funding gap could be entirely closed with public funding, without the need to raise taxes or increase deficits, meaning there is no need for private capital at all.

If a political choice is made to rely instead on private capital for conservation, then the most effective and fastest way to reorient private capital would be via environmental regulations that curb destruction. This is because any regulation will have an impact on the future expected profits of the sectors involved, and private capital flows will adjust automatically to the new profit expectations.

Creating a market for biodiversity credits is, therefore, arguably, the last and least effective option if the goal is to address biodiversity loss.

Creating a market for biodiversity credits is, therefore, arguably, the last and least effective option if the goal is to address biodiversity loss.

But even if we were to deem environmental regulations aligned to planetary boundaries too “coercive” and we chose instead to use only the carrot and no stick, it would still be far faster, more efficient and more cost-effective to do this via favourable tax or regulatory treatment rather than by creating a whole new financial market infrastructure based on a pseudo-commodity.

Creating a market for biodiversity credits is, therefore, arguably, the last and least effective option if the goal is to address biodiversity loss. Recent precedents such as the 2008 banking crisis, the Covid recovery plan, or the recent increase in EU defence spending also show that governments can find the money when they want to.

A Lack of Environmental Integrity

In terms of concerns over the creation of a market for nature credits, such a privatization and financialization of conservation policies would fundamentally change these latter by introducing a requirement for profitability. This would, in turn, result in weaker policies than if they were based on regulation. And we have already seen the deleterious consequences of financialization in other areas such as healthcare, education, and housing. Nature credits would also mean a transfer of sovereignty from the State to the financial markets, the priorities of which are unlikely to match ecological priorities, thereby threatening our future and survival.

There is also a fundamental contradiction between the need for a large number of credit types to reflect the large number of species, and the need to transform millions of species into a handful of types of credit in order to have a liquid financial market in which buyers and sellers can easily find trading counterparts. Such a level of simplification is not compatible with environmental integrity.

This makes biodiversity offsetting not “better than nothing”, as is sometimes said, but worse than nothing, as it helps maintain a social licence to destroy, and reduces public pressure for real solutions by giving the illusion that the issue is being addressed.

This is why biodiversity offsetting has had such a poor track record in past decades.

Crucially, I fear that biodiversity credits will also be used largely for offsetting purposes as there is no other business case on this scale. The European Union’s roadmap already places nature credits beyond the mitigation hierarchy —the framework that prioritises avoiding environmental harm first, then minimising, restoring, and only as a last resort offsetting residual impacts. This culminates in offsetting, thereby reinforcing and legitimizing it, particularly as the current balance of political forces is likely to push the EU to align with the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits framework, which explicitly accommodates offsetting.

And yet there is a scientific consensus on the fact that biodiversity offsetting is not possible in most cases, as our scientific knowledge is incomplete, the science of restoration is in its infancy, and it is simply not possible to transform millions of species into a handful of liquid tradable assets. This is why biodiversity offsetting has had such a poor track record in past decades. This makes biodiversity offsetting not “better than nothing”, as is sometimes said, but worse than nothing, as it helps maintain a social licence to destroy, and reduces public pressure for real solutions by giving the illusion that the issue is being addressed.

The First Scandals Are Already Emerging

I fear that biodiversity credits and offsets will primarily take place in the Global South, under the argument that this is where you find the most intact biodiversity. In reality, however, it will also be because land is far cheaper, as a consequence of colonialism. This will lead to the same land-grabbing, tensions, and human rights abuses that have been documented with carbon offsets.

This is in addition to the fact that getting paid to protect nature somewhere in order to enable its destruction elsewhere could well stand in contradiction to the values and worldview of many Indigenous Peoples and communities. Many Indigenous Peoples understand land, waters, animals and plants as kin, or as part of a living territory, not as external “natural capital” or a bundle of “ecosystem services”. Moreover, market‑based schemes risk subordinating Indigenous territorial governance to distant financial actors and State agencies, effectively recentralizing control over territories that Indigenous Peoples have struggled for generations to defend.

The revenues can be very useful for some Indigenous communities. However, as always, the devil is in the detail: what proportion of the governance body is made up of Indigenous representatives, and do they receive at least 50% of the revenue, for example?

The revenues can be very useful for some Indigenous communities. However, as always, the devil is in the detail.

While there is currently a big push to involve Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities in the various international biodiversity credit initiatives, I understand this to be more for communication purposes than a desire for real co-design and fair sharing of decision-making power and revenues. Getting a few Indigenous leaders on board is a great and cheap way to avoid accusations of green neocolonialism, and to divert attention from the lack of environmental integrity in these schemes. This is because the conversation now becomes one of “look at these poor farmers that we’re helping with our good hearts, how dare you criticize biodiversity credits and take these revenues from them”.

To be clear, I appreciate that the revenues can be very useful for some Indigenous communities. However, as always, the devil lies in the detail: what proportion of the governance body is made up of Indigenous representatives, and do they receive at least 50% of the revenue, for example? Furthermore, biodiversity credit and offset projects are often promoted in situations where communities are under strong economic and political pressure to accept them, and this can effectively undermine the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), turning “consent” into coercion.

The Impact on Indigenous Self-Governance

I would like to emphasize two points: firstly, I understand the current emphasis on Indigenous participation as indicating that a vast proportion of biodiversity credit/offset projects will take place on Indigenous Peoples’ territories rather than in the countries of the Global North. Secondly, I want to caution against the promises of revenues from the sale of these credits. These are hypothetical revenues that will likely be extremely volatile, as they are based on financial market prices, and could easily disappear once political leaders in the Global North no longer see a need to pretend to address the biodiversity crisis. In fact, the UK provides a textbook example of such a risk. After starting a mandatory biodiversity offset market in 2024, leading many to start restoration projects, and farmers and landowners to expect revenues, in 2025 the government introduced an alternative: real estate developers will now have an alternative to offsetting 110% of their residual destruction of nature, by paying a one-off fee into a conservation fund.

If markets collapse, communities may be left without a stable income and unable to return to their traditional livelihoods – pressured instead towards dispossession or further commodification of their lands just to survive.

If markets collapse, communities may be left without a stable income and unable to return to their traditional livelihoods.

The consequences could be especially severe for Indigenous Peoples: long-term contracts may restrict land use and governance while promised revenues are often short-lived and uncertain. If markets collapse, communities may be left without a stable income and unable to return to their traditional livelihoods – pressured instead towards dispossession or further commodification of their lands just to survive.

There are already a growing number of scandals linked to biodiversity credits and these point to deeper structural problems. They include TotalEnergies destroying a national park in Uganda to drill oil and claiming to offset, and Eiffage building a dam in the Ivory Coast and destroying the forest and protected species while falsely promising no net loss. Similar patterns are emerging elsewhere: in Mozambique, TotalEnergies’ megaproject has been associated with misleading environmental claims while, in Guinea,mining projects backed by international financial actors have been linked to large-scale ecological damage framed through compensatory mechanisms.

Who Is Promoting These Markets and Why?

Why then are these markets being promoted, knowing that they will likely be an environmental failure, just like carbon offsetting before them? I understand the primary political goal as one of protecting the status quo for a few more years. These markets give the illusion of action while avoiding any confrontation with the private interests that are currently benefiting from destruction, including mining, agribusiness, infrastructure, and real estate, and avoiding any questioning of outdated and unsustainable economic paradigms.

Put another way, I understand that the European Commission does want to address the biodiversity crisis but only to the extent that it does not get in the way of short-term economic growth and competitiveness, which remain its overarching priorities. I also fear that this market could be instrumentalized to dismantle EU environmental regulations even further, by claiming they are no longer needed as they have been replaced by this market. In a way, this is very similar to climate politics, and carbon offsetting in particular, which are both an environmental failure and a political success, as they have successfully delayed meaningful climate action for many years.

Moreover, these new markets are also not without risk for potential private investors, who will be exposed to massive levels of regulatory and reputational risk surrounding this pseudo-commodity. Recent events in the UK have also highlighted the risks of expecting to earn a stable income from the sale of biodiversity credits.

The primary objective of promoting these markets is to maintain the status quo. Image: Frédéric Hache

The Solutions Are Well-Known

What is needed instead is a shift in existing harmful subsidies and a tightening of environmental regulations in order to address the root causes of biodiversity loss and align with planetary boundaries. We know, for example, that the global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss through deforestation to raise livestock. The solution, according to the EAT-The Lancet Commission, is to cut food waste and change diets, incentivizing this by a shift in agricultural subsidies, a tax on unhealthy foods and regulated advertising. This would massively reduce deforestation, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce water pollution from overuse of pesticides.

Another central pillar of an effective biodiversity strategy is the recognition and reinforcement of Indigenous stewardship. Securing collective land titles, recognizing Indigenous legal and governance systems, and providing stable, unconditional public support for Indigenous‑led conservation and territorial defence are among the most effective measures a government can take. The other root causes of biodiversity loss, such as overexploitation of natural resources, climate change and pollution, should likewise be addressed by gradually changing the way we consume, eat and travel, and by putting in place regulations, including to cut plastic production. This would, of course, require confronting private lobby groups such as industrial food and farming, and the current political momentum for this is not great.

I take comfort, however, in the fact that the history of social and environmental progress shows several examples of how transformative change has occurred despite unfavourable political contexts — from the trade union movement to the suffragettes, from the US civil rights movement to the environmental movement, as well as the longstanding struggles of Indigenous Peoples to defend their territories. I also take comfort in the fact that several recent surveys show that a majority of citizens worldwide are already on board, willing to change the way they work and live in order to address the climate crisis. Given enough awareness, they would likely show the same support for addressing the biodiversity crisis. The future has not yet been written; once grassroots organizing reaches a critical mass, we will eventually win.

The post Biodiversity Credits: an Outdated and Misguided Solution to the Crisis appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

One biodiversity credit represents a quantified, measurable and tradable “unit” of a positive biodiversity outcome ,such as the restoration or protection of particular ecosystems or species. Leading initiatives insist that, unlike traditional offsets, these credits should serve solely as additional investments in biodiversity rather than as mechanisms to compensate for damage caused elsewhere. In this context, they are presented as a voluntary tool for companies and investors seeking to demonstrate “nature-positive” contributions; however, the distinction between credits and offsets remains unclear in practice.

Various structures driven by States and private actors have explored “dual use,” whereby biodiversity units contribute to both mandatory regulatory offset requirements and voluntary “nature credit” markets. However, this possibility remains controversial due to concerns regarding double counting and system integrity concerns. National approaches vary: For example, England’s Environment Act 2021 established a mandatory, regulated market for biodiversity units, whereas New Zealand currently supports a voluntary, privately managed market that could eventually interact with regulatory offset mechanisms.

The Promotion of Private Financing

Major carbon certification bodies and consultancies are also entering into this space. Organisations such as Verra, South Pole, Plan Vivo, rePLANET, Terrasos and ValueNature have developed methodologies to certify biodiversity outcomes and create tradable units. The appeal is clear: a new product for investors and corporations, and a new revenue stream for intermediaries who already control a large share of the carbon market.

A growing network of initiatives – including the Biodiversity Credit Alliance, the World Economic Forum’s Financing for Nature platform, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), and new multilateral funding mechanisms such as the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund under the Global Environment Facility – is shaping the architecture of nature finance and promoting “high-integrity” biodiversity markets. In parallel, initiatives such as the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits are advancing a Global Biodiversity Credits Roadmap through voluntary,  multi-stakeholder processes.

At COP16 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, governments prioritised mobilising private finance for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and operationalising the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, yet they stopped short of formally endorsing biodiversity credit markets. Although the fund recognises Indigenous Peoples’ rights and social safeguards, serious doubts remain regarding how compliance with these commitments will be upheld in practice as biodiversity financing increases.

The Roadmap towards Nature Credits does not adequately address the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including their rights to lands, territories, and resources.

The Roadmap towards Nature Credits does not adequately address the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In July 2025, the European Commission published its Roadmap towards Nature Credits, a market-based framework aimed at mobilising private sector investment for biodiversity conservation, based on the premise that public funding alone is insufficient. The Roadmap does not adequately address the rights of Indigenous Peoples including their rights to lands, territories, and resources. Nor does it sufficiently address the structural drivers of biodiversity loss, such as biodiversity-harmful subsidies, financial flows and production systems.

Can biodiversity be standardised and sold?

Proponents of this argument note that biodiversity credits can unlock conservation funding, reward sound environmental management, and incentivize better business practices. However, the “financing gap” approach adopted in the MMBKM obscures the fact that current proposals rely heavily on private capital from the very entities most responsible for biodiversity loss. This reinforces patterns in which wealthy states and corporations retain control over “nature finance” flows.

Biodiversity credits thus risk replicating colonial dynamics by concentrating decision-making power and value extraction in the Global North, while positioning Global South territories and peoples as sites of environmental “reparation.” The technical language of “market integrity” ultimately upholds a political project that preserves extractive economic patterns while shifting responsibility for ecological damage onto the lands of Indigenous Peoples and racialised communities.

Current strategies disproportionately benefit market-based tools, avoiding the strengthening of territorial rights, the halting of destructive projects, or subsidy reform.

Current strategies disproportionately benefit market-based tools, avoiding the strengthening of territorial rights, the halting of destructive projects, or subsidy reform.

However, core challenges are often presented as technical problems: defining a biodiversity unit that is scientifically robust, measurable and scalable. In practice, these efforts face deeper ecological and ethical problems. Biodiversity is radically place-based — ecosystems are not interchangeable, and their relationships complex and often only partially understood. Attempts to define “ecological equivalence” have already failed in biodiversity offset systems/ Awith a global review found that most of these structures failed to deliver on their promise of “no net loss” due to poor monitoring, weak enforcement, and unrealistic restoration timelines.

Although biodiversity credits claim to focus on positive outcomes rather than compensating losses, they inherit the same logic of converting complex ecological relationships into standardised, tradable units. The push for global fungibility reflects investors’ need for liquidity rather than ecological realities. As a result, this  carries the risk of fragmenting ecosystems into “assets” and “service units” — undermining the holistic approaches to territory that underpin many Indigenous legal orders.

There is also a broader issue regarding reliance on markets to resolve a crisis largely driven by accumulation of wealth. Economic tools, such as credits, should complement — not replace — regulation, public funding and collective forms of governance. Yet, current strategies disproportionately prioritize market-based instruments, while failing to strengthen land rights, halt destructive projects, or reform subsidies.

Indigenous territories at the frontline of biodiversity finance

Many biodiversity credit pilot projects are being developed in the Global South, particularly in forest territories governed by Indigenous Peoples —the same lands that have hosted carbon offset projects over the past two decades, frequently accompanied by rights violations and social conflicts. Protected areas have repeatedly been established without recognising customary tenure, without ensuring Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), and with severe restrictions on traditional livelihoods. Biodiversity credits are likely to intensify these dynamics in various ways:

Land pressure. Assigning a financial value to biodiversity conservation outcomes makes Indigenous territories more attractive to conservation investors, particularly where land rights remain unresolved, creating a risk of long-term management arrangements that marginalize customary institutions.

Control and surveillance. Verification systems such as remote sensing, standardised indicators, digital tokens displace Indigenous knowledge and governance, benefitting external experts whilst potentially monitoring how communities use their own territories.

Unfair contracts. As with carbon projects, communities often lack independent legal advice; contracts may be signed by narrow leadership without collective consent, with small and poorly documented revenue shares vulnerable to elite capture.

Division and criminalisation. Where significant sums of money are at stake, intermediaries can exploit internal differences to secure consent. Those who question projects risk being labelled anti-development or threats to conservation — a serious concern given the growing criminalisation and killing of environmental defenders.

Beneath these concrete risks lies a deeper clash of values. Biodiversity credit methodologies reduce nature to what can be counted, economically valued and traded, whereas many Indigenous knowledge systems are grounded in responsibility, reciprocity and the sacred nature of the natural world — where territory cannot be partitioned into commodities. When that relational worldview is treated as an obstacle rather than a foundation for public policy, biodiversity credits become yet another tool of colonisation.

Whose integrity?

In response to mounting criticism, biodiversity credit initiatives emphasize “high-integrity” principles such as robust governance, FPIC, equitable benefit-sharing, and grievance mechanisms. Some multilateral funds publicly recognise Indigenous Peoples as custodians of biodiversity. However, there is a marked gap between rhetoric and practice. Core principles and methodologies are being designed by coalitions of financial institutions, conservation NGOs and standard-setting bodies, with limited or late-stage Indigenous involvement.

Since the adoption of the KMGBF, numerous Indigenous organisations — including the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues — have repeatedly warned, including at CBD COP16, that biodiversity markets risk replicating the dispossession, inequality, and territorial control observed in carbon offset projects. These organizations emphasise that biodiversity financing must address historical injustices, strengthen direct funding for Indigenous Peoples, and avoid commodifying nature while undermining collective territorial governance. Any emerging biodiversity credit framework must critically incorporate these positions.

Governance must reflect genuine Indigenous leadership. Indigenous organizations must occupy real decision-making spaces in the design and oversight of biodiversity financing mechanisms.

Governance must reflect genuine Indigenous leadership. Indigenous organizations must occupy real decision-making spaces in the design and oversight of biodiversity financing mechanisms.

Three fundamental shifts are required to prevent biodiversity credits from replicating the harms associated with carbon markets. First, rights must precede markets: recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ land, territory and collective tenure rights should be a prerequisite for any credit scheme, rather than an aspiration. This entails the full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — particularly regarding FPIC and self-determination — in both law and practice.

Second, governance must reflect genuine Indigenous leadership. Indigenous organisations should hold real decision-making roles — not merely advisory ones — in the design and oversight of biodiversity finance mechanisms, supported by dedicated funding and respect for diverse knowledge systems. Third, the role of credits must remain limited. They should neither license destructive activities through offsetting nor replace regulation and public financing. Binding rules are needed to prevent double-counting, greenwashing and the use of credits to justify mining, fossil fuel extraction or large infrastructure projects elsewhere.

Choosing a different path

The drive for biodiversity credits addresses a real problem:  chronic underfunding of biodiversity, particularly where Indigenous Peoples are its primary custodians despite historic marginalisation. Yet, direct funding for Indigenous-led conservation, coupled with legal reforms to secure land and governance rights, would likely deliver far more enduring outcomes than speculative credit schemes.

Whether or not Indigenous Peoples engage with these markets is a matter of self-determination, but any decision must be based on FPIC with transparent information regarding the risks and alternatives. Governments and private actors must not treat credit schemes as a shortcut around the harder decisions of ending destructive industries and confronting unequal power relations.

The fundamental question is which visions of nature, development and justice will shape the future. If biodiversity credits simply reinforce the extractive logic that created the biodiversity crisis, they will represent another round of sacrifices imposed on Indigenous Peoples.

The post Biodiversity Credits: ‘Innovative’ Structures, Old Risks for Indigenous Peoples appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Throughout the workshop, one message resonated strongly: carbon markets cannot be understood in isolation, but rather as part of a longer history of interventions in Indigenous territories. Participants drew a line connecting different historical periods, from colonization, to the rubber boom, and the expansion of oil extraction and mining, with contemporary climate initiatives. In each of these processes, Indigenous territories have become the focus of external interests, while the Peoples who inhabit them have had little decision-making power.

The New Face of Extractivism

From this perspective, carbon has become a new element within a familiar pattern. The issue is not simply about conserving forests or reducing emissions, but about who has the power to determine how territories are used and under what conditions. For many participants, these mechanisms serve global interests by helping to sustain prevailing economic models, allowing companies and corporations to continue polluting while claiming to offset their environmental impacts. In doing so, responsibility is increasingly shifted onto Indigenous Peoples, who have long protected and cared for their ancestral territories.

The experiences shared during the workshop reinforced this conclusion. Participants cited examples of conservation projects that have restricted the customary use of Indigenous territories. These restrictions include limiting traditional practices such as hunting, fishing and gathering. In other cases, protected areas or carbon projects were implemented in Indigenous territories without adequate consultation processes, giving rise to conflicts that continue to this day. These experiences also highlighted how conservation agendas can operate as mechanisms of control.

The problem is not only carbon markets. The language changes, but relationships of power remain intact. For this reason, beyond the technical discussion, this issue was highlighted as a political struggle over territory, autonomy, and rights.

The problem is not only carbon markets. Language changes, but relationships of power remain intact.

These processes do not occur in isolation. They are accompanied by narratives that promise economic benefits, local development and so-called “improvements in quality of life”, often reduced to health and education. These arebasic rights that states should already be fully guaranteeing. Several participants recalled that similar promises have long been part of the story, particularly in the context of oil extraction, where the outcomes failed to match the expectations that had been created. This collective memory provides an important historical lens through which current carbon-related proposals are understood.

In this sense, the problem is not only the carbon market as an instrument, but also the way it is being introduced into territories marked by histories of dispossession. The language has changed, but the underlying power relations remain. For this reason, the issue was framed not simply as a technical debate, but as a political struggle over territory, autonomy, and rights. Through such disputes, Indigenous Peoples seek to avoid repeating the experiences of the past.

Unequal Decision-Making and Internal Conflicts

Another key theme was how decisions are made within these processes, given the profound power imbalances between the actors involved. While companies, NGOs and governments possess technical expertise, financial resources and institutional backing, local communities often engage with in these processes with limited access to information and under starklyunequal conditions. In many cases, external actors arrive with pre-designed proposals and seek to secure rapid agreements that do not align with community timelines or decision-making processes. Negotiations are frequently conducted without going through collective mechanisms such as community assemblies, generating tensions and divisions within communities.

One of the issues most frequently highlighted was the lack of clear and accessible information. Communities do not always have access to complete information about the benefits, obligations and long-term implications of carbon projects. This problem increases the risk of decisions being made under pressure or on the basis of incomplete information, undermining the ability of Indigenous Peoples to fully exercise their right to self-determination.

The importance of free, prior, and informed consent was highlighted with the recognition that there exists a necessity to go beyond its formal application. For this, there was an emphasis on the need to strengthen community-owned decision-making mechanisms.

Decisions are made outside of territories and then they are taken to local communities to receive approval, many times, under fraudulent pretenses.

The role of the State was also called into question. Cases documented in countries such as Colombia and Bolivia showed that state laws and regulations do not necessarily guarantee transparent or equitable processes. In some instances, governments themselves have promoted the aforementioned mechanisms without ensuring the effective participation of Indigenous Peoples. This suggests that decisions are often shaped outside Indigenous territories and only later brought to communities for approval, in many cases under fraudulent pretenses.

In light of this information, participants highlighted the importance of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), while stressing the need to move beyond a merely procedural application of this right. Particular emphasis was placed on strengthening Indigenous decision-making institutions. Such institutions include community assemblies, local statutes, and territorial governments, fortifying each as essential spaces for the assurance of collective decision-making processes and the prevention of imposed or even fragmented decision-making.

Autonomy, Memory and Indigenous-Led Alternatives

The discussions converged on a key point: decisions concerning Indigenous territories cannot be subordinated to external agendas. Autonomy and self-determination are not abstract principles but concrete conditions that enable Indigenous Peoples to decide what under what terms they accept and reject decisions. Historical memory is central to this position. Experiences with oil extraction, mining and “conservation and development” policies have left enduring scars such as broken promises, damaged territories and casualties. Consequently, carbon markets are not viewed as isolated opportunities but as part of a broader continuum of external interventions imposed on Indigenous lands and peoples.

Rather than adopting a purely reactive stance, Indigenous leaders emphasized that viable alternatives are already being implemented. These include community forest management, Indigenous production systems, traditional medicine, community-based tourism and Indigenous knowledge systems. Far from being mere aspirations, these are living practices that sustain life in Indigenous territories. Strengthening these alternatives points towards a future that differs fundamentally from the offsetting schemes promoted by external actors.

In this regard, the workshop ended not only with critical reflections but also with a clear direction: strengthening Indigenous-led agendas. The emphasis is on consolidating territorial processes—including organization, economic initiatives, communication and political coordination—that can sustain autonomous decision-making over time. Rather than adapting to carbon markets, the goal is to advance an Indigenous path in which territory is not treated as a tradable asset but recognized as the foundation of collective life.

Communication, Coordination and the Struggle over Narratives

The discussions held during the workshop highlighted the need to contest not only what happens in Indigenous territories, but also the narratives through which these processes are understood and represented. Carbon markets do not advance solely through economic agreements or legal frameworks; they are also promoted through narratives that portray them as the only solution to the climate crisis. In this context, communication becomes  a field of strategy, as there is a significant gap between how these projects are presented in international forums and how they are experienced in Indigenous territories. At the global level, they are described as mechanisms for sustainable conservation, yet within communities they are often experienced as processes that generate uncertainty, restrictions, conflict and violations of rights.

This disconnect reinforces the need for Indigenous Peoples to develop and disseminate their own narratives. Participants stressed the importance of strengthening Indigenous communication networks that can facilitate the sharing of information, the visibility of experiences and the production of analyses rooted in territorial realities. The aim is not merely to inform, but to build an autonomous voice capable of responding to narratives imposed from outside. In this way, communication becomes a key tool for territorial defense and political advocacy.

All in all, the debate regarding carbon markets is not only material, but also symbolic and political. It deals with who defines the problem, who proposes the solutions, and under whose terms such decisions are made.

The debate regarding carbon markets is both symbolic and political: who defines the problem, who proposes solutions, and under whose terms such decisions are made.

Coordination among Indigenous Peoples was another key theme. Although national contexts differ, many of the challenges they face are shared across the region. Exchanging experiences, lessons learned, and strategies helps strengthen collective positions and prevents these conversations from unfolding in isolation. Such coordination extends beyond local and national spaces to international arenas, where decision-making directly affects Indigenous territories.

Participants also highlighted the importance of identifying allies and mapping the actors involved in this landscape, recognizing that not all share the same interests. Such mapping enables more informed decision-making and helps Indigenous Peoples identify efforts to draw them into agendas that have not been shaped by their own realities. Taken together, the struggle surrounding carbon markets is not only material but, above all, political and symbolic. At stake are questions of who defines the problem, who proposes the solutions and on whose terms such decisions are made. In this context, communication and coordination are essential tools for sustaining processes of resistance and for building alternatives emerging from Indigenous territories.

A Contested Horizon: The Future of Indigenous Territories

The workshop did not result in a definitive conclusion; rather, it confirmed that a new arena of debate is emerging around Indigenous territories. Carbon markets have become one component within a broader global dynamic in which forms of control over nature, access to nature and decision-making power are being reconfigured. This is no longer solely a matter of direct extraction, but of more complex mechanisms that operate through regulations, certification schemes, financial instruments and climate-related discourses.

In this context, Indigenous Peoples face not only technical or economic challenges, but profoundly political ones. At stake are their territories, rights and autonomy. The discussions made clear that these processes are not being passively accepted. Instead, they reflect a critical reading that identifies in carbon markets a reconfiguration of earlier forms of dispossession, albeit expressed through new languages and justifications. At the same time, the debate went beyond outright rejection, opening space for reflection on what it means to care for and defend territories, how the climate crisis should be addressed, and what kind of future Indigenous Peoples seek to build.

What is at play is not simply a mechanism, but also the sense and feeling over the territory. Here, the message is clear: life, self-determination, and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples cannot be negotiated.

The climate crisis cannot be resolved simply by placing responsibility in the hands of those  who have historically stewarded and cared for the forests.

Against a global narrative that turns forests into market assets, it is necessary to adopt a different perspective in which territory is not a resource, but a space of life, relations and community. This contrast defines the current moment. For those who took part in the meeting, carbon markets do not represent a solution, but rather a new form of intervention in Indigenous territories that, under the language of conservation and climate action, reconfigure long-standing logics of control and seek to determine the use of spaces that do not belong to them.

In this context, the position is clear: territories are not for sale, nor can they be turned into compensation instruments to sustain economies that continue to pollute. The climate crisis will not be solved by shifting responsibility onto those who have historically cared for forests. What is at stake is not only a mechanism, but the very meaning of territory itself. At this point, the message is clear: life, self-determination and the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples cannot be negotiated nor debated.

The post The Amazon at a Crossroads: Indigenous Peoples Confront the Expansion of Carbon Markets appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Bulari Lolki from Sesia in Northern Kenya

One community leader’s sentiments in Northern Kenya echo questions we have heard from hundreds of Indigenous and grassroots communities around the world. Carbon markets are intensifying pressure on land, particularly in places where collective tenure rights are weak or not formally recognized. This raises widespread concerns that carbon credit projects will lead to land grabs or will sideline communities in decision-making about what happens on their land. 

At the same time, many of the communities we work with welcome the revenue carbon projects can generate to support local livelihoods and conservation efforts — if they can set the terms under which projects move forward.

In practice, this remains difficult. Common challenges include:

• Highly technical language: Carbon projects often involve complex legal, financial, and scientific concepts (e.g., carbon accounting, the process of measuring and tracking how much carbon is stored or reduced by a project, and legal rights to emissions removals and reductions from project activities). This makes it difficult for communities to fully understand project terms, risks, and benefits and limits their ability to make informed decisions.

• Lack of transparency: Communities frequently have limited access to clear, timely, and complete information about project agreements, revenue flows, and safeguards. The lack of full disclosure during the project design and implementation creates uncertainty and can lead to mistrust or uninformed consent.

• Power imbalances in negotiations: Project developers and investors often have significantly greater resources, technical expertise, and legal support than the communities they engage with. Many of these communities are located in remote, underserved areas and have historically been marginalized by governments, with limited access to basic services. This makes it extremely difficult for communities to engage with developers on equal footing.  

As a result, communities find themselves at a crossroads: they seek the financial benefits that carbon projects promise to improve their livelihoods, while also striving to retain autonomy over their land and resources. In the context of uneven legal protections for their rights, communities struggle to negotiate fair agreements and often face pressure to accept unfavorable terms.

Organizing Collectively to Overcome Power Asymmetries

In the Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project — the world’s largest soil carbon project encompassing Sesia, a Samburu pastoralist community in Northern Kenya — communities initially struggled to engage with the project proponent as equal partners. The first decade of the project brought many benefits, including improvements to grazing lands and more than 14 million USD in revenue for participating communities. But community members had concerns about how the project operated day to day. For example, they wanted full transparency about how much revenue the project generated. They also wanted greater autonomy to decide how the community share is used.  

In 2023, Maasai, Samburu, Turkana, Rendile, and Borana pastoralist communities began organizing collectively across the entire 2 million hectare project area. For the first time, community land management committees gained access to the project implementation agreement that defined grazing management, structures for project governance, and arrangements for revenue sharing. Together, they drafted a set of shared demands for a new agreement with the project proponent. 

Their demands included access to financial records and contracts with marketers of carbon credits; a dedicated project bank account with communities as signatories into which all revenue from carbon credit sales would be deposited; and a new revenue-sharing arrangement that gives communities the majority of the revenue from the project. They also proposed a new governance structure that would include representatives from all of the community land management committees and community conservancies involved in the project. 

Communities putting forward their demands catalyzed a renegotiation of the project implementation agreement. It also kick-started a process for renewing free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) with wide participation among all residents in deciding whether to approve the terms of the new agreement. Sesia and its neighboring communities believe carbon projects present an opportunity, but only if their rights are fully protected and the project is aligned with their vision for the future.

Practical Strategies for Protecting Community Rights

The strategies that pastoralist communities in northern Kenya used to overcome common challenges reflect key lessons we’ve learned alongside frontline communities across dozens of countries: 

1- Demystify the law. Before communities engage with a project developer, they should learn about their rights under national land laws. Conservation policies and legal frameworks for carbon trading may also include protections for community rights. If the community’s land rights are not formally recognized, carbon projects can pose significant risks and it may be harder to negotiate a fair agreement. 

In addition to national laws, there are also safeguards required by carbon certification standards that communities can use to protect themselves. These often include rights to access information, to give or refuse consent for the project to operate on community land, and the right to benefit from outside investment on the community’s land.

2- Conduct fact finding. There are several key pieces of information that communities need to consider when determining if they want to engage in carbon credit projects. They include the type of project proposed; the track record of the project proponent; the impacts on land use, local ecosystems, and communities’ livelihoods and locations with cultural or spiritual significance; and the potential revenue from credit sales.

The project proponent is obligated to share much of this information with communities as part of FPIC. Still, communities often struggle to access the information they need to make decisions. To get the information communities need, they can:

• Request information, in as specific terms as possible, directly from the proponent in writing.
• Check national and global registries, like this one from Verra — one of the global standards that sets rules for carbon projects and issues carbon credits. Two particularly important documents to look for are (a) the project design document (PDD) and (b) monitoring and verification reports. 
• File right to information requests with the government agency responsible for approving and monitoring carbon projects. 

3- Use collective bargaining. Most carbon projects affect multiple communities. This creates an opportunity to build collective power. Communities are in a stronger position if they negotiate together as a united front. We have found two practices to be particularly powerful for collective bargaining:

• Form a negotiating team to represent the community’s (or communities’) collective interests. A negotiating team can maintain collective action across the community (or communities) and push for better terms that represent the interests of the community as a whole. The negotiating team can also be tasked with regularly updating the wider community, gathering input, and ensuring collective agreement on key decisions. 
• Identify the communities’ most important demands and use them to propose the terms for an agreement. Communities often wait for project developers to make an offer, but whoever makes the first offer tends to have an advantage because the initial proposal acts as a point of reference or “anchor” that shapes how both sides approach the negotiations. When communities put forward a proposal proactively, they have more power to shape the negotiations. 

4- Get legal support. Communities can successfully negotiate on their own, but it can be helpful to get support from community paralegals or lawyers at key steps, particularly during fact finding, when evaluating an offer, and for a final review of the draft contract to ensure it is enforceable and aligns with existing laws. Community paralegals or grassroots justice defenders can also walk with the community through the full process, from understanding the community’s rights to fact finding to negotiations to monitoring and enforcing any agreement that is reached.  

Together, these strategies can help communities engage from a position of power while reinforcing broader ongoing struggles for self-determination, land rights, and climate justice.

Building a Global Movement for Carbon Justice

Drawing on experience supporting communities to respond to carbon projects in more than 20 countries, members of the Grassroots Justice Network have launched a global campaign to put community rights and leadership at the center of carbon markets. Together, we identified six principles necessary to make carbon projects fair. 

The first principle is that carbon credits cannot be a substitute for companies reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions. The other five principles focus on the people who live where projects take place: respecting land and water rights; ensuring the right to FPIC, including the right to say no to proposed projects; advocating for the majority of revenue from carbon sales to go to communities for any projects on community land; recognizing and honoring communities’ leadership as land stewards; and ensuring that safeguards are effectively enforced.

We are actively working to bring the Carbon Justice Principles to life at the community, national, and global levels through peer learning and collective action.  First, we are creating practical tools and resources that Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities can use to overcome power imbalances with project developers. Members of our network distilled lessons from negotiations with carbon project developers through a nine-month series of learning circles. We recently compiled those insights in “How to Negotiate with Carbon Project Developers”, a practical toolkit that offers strategies communities can use to find key information about a project, negotiate from a place of power, and monitor and enforce the terms if an agreement is reached. It also includes case studies from Kenya, Liberia, Zambia, Brazil, Colombia, and the Philippines. 

We also developed Carbon Justice 101, an online course that provides a practical orientation to how carbon markets work and the risks and opportunities for communities. The course will be offered on a regular basis, with updates on how to enroll posted on the course webpage.

Second, we are advocating collectively to shape the rules that govern carbon markets. National laws on carbon trading can set crucial norms securing communities’ land rights, right to FPIC, and revenue sharing. We distilled practical guidance for civil society groups engaged in shaping national policy in a second toolkit: “How National Legislation Can Advance Carbon Justice”.

Global frameworks define standards for the wider carbon market. Guided by the carbon justice principles, Network members have advocated collectively for stricter rules under Verra and Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, the UN mechanism that will govern how countries and companies can trade international carbon credits while meeting their climate commitments. 

Join us in calling for stronger recognition of community leadership and protections for community rights. You can get involved in the carbon justice campaign by joining our WhatsApp community, signing up for our newsletter, or letting us know if you are planning to participate in key policy forums this year.

For more information on Carbon Justice 101.

Join our WhatsApp community.

Subscribe to our newsletter.

The post Putting the Leadership of Indigenous Peoples at the Center of Carbon Markets appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Established in 1996, the Arctic Council is the leading intergovernmental forum for cooperation between the eight Arctic States and Arctic Indigenous Peoples. As the preeminent forum for cooperation and knowledge production, the Arctic Council aims to be responsive to the priorities and needs of Arctic inhabitants on issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic. The Council’s mandate explicitly excludes military security. The Arctic Council comprises the eight Arctic States: Canada, Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russian Federation, Sweden and United States. The Chairship of the Arctic Council rotates every two years among the Arctic States. The Chair of the Arctic Council is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the country holding the Chairship. The Arctic Council includes Arctic Indigenous Peoples as Permanent Participants: the Aleut International Association, Arctic Athabaskan Council, Gwich’in Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Russian Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), and Saami Council.

The Council’s activities are primarily conducted in six Working Groups and one standalone Expert Group that cover a broad range of subjects, from climate change to emergency response, from mental health to sustainable development. They provide a broad and scientifically-sound knowledge base upon which informed decisions can be taken. They also develop best practices and recommendations for safe and sustainable operations in the Arctic. The Arctic Council has Observers from non-Arctic States, along with intergovernmental, inter-parliamentary, global, regional and non-governmental organizations.

Unique Status of Permanent Participant

Notable in the Arctic Council structure is the model of Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ participation through the category of Permanent Participants, as recognized in the Council’s founding document, the Ottawa Declaration (1996). The Permanent Participants have full consultation rights in terms of the Council’s negotiations and decisions and make valuable contributions to its activities. The Permanent Participants participate at all levels of the Arctic Council, initiate and lead or co-lead projects, and contribute to the Arctic Council’s expert work and political proceedings. For even stronger engagement in the Working Groups, Permanent Participants are advocating for Permanent Participant Co-Chairs in the Arctic Council Working Groups.

The Ottawa Declaration also recognizes the traditional knowledge of the [I]ndigenous [P]eople[s] of the Arctic and notes their importance, and that of Arctic science and research, to the collective understanding of the circumpolar Arctic. Ever since the establishment of the Arctic Council, the Traditional Knowledge of Indigenous Peoples has held significant value in the Council. The Arctic Council was built on the foundation of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and emerged as the most significant institutional recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ voices in Arctic governance. This unique structure allows Indigenous Peoples’ representatives to influence policy recommendations directly, although they do not hold formal voting rights.

The IPS has had an important role in facilitating Arctic Indigenous cooperation and that role will continue in the future.  

The IPS has had an important role in facilitating Arctic Indigenous cooperation and that role will continue in the future.  

The Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat (IPS), established in 1994, is a support secretariat for the six Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. Led by a Board with members from each of the six Permanent Participants’ organizations and three State representatives, the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat today lies alongside the Arctic Council Secretariat while operating under its respective mandate and serving the Council in its designated ways. The main mandate of the IPS is to facilitate active participation and full consultation of the Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council but it also has other roles. For instance, by providing administrative support, coordinating communication, assisting with meetings, and supporting initiatives related to Indigenous cultures and environmental protection.

In 1994, the IPS was established as an institution supporting the Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations under the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy. The Ottawa Declaration mandated the IPS to continue, under the framework of the Arctic Council, to support the Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations. At that time, the Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations had, with the support of the IPS, fought hard to include Indigenous voices in the structure of the Arctic Council when it was established. As a result of this work, Indigenous Peoples became a central part of the Council. The Participants have expressed their commitment to continue working towards stronger participation of Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic Council. Over the years, PPs have also focused on ensuring that the IPS is strengthened and thrives in fulfilling its mandate to support PPs. The IPS has had an important role in facilitating Arctic Indigenous cooperation and that role will continue in the future.

The unique status of Permanent Participants

Since its establishment, the Arctic Council has set a consensus-based precedent, including full consultation of the six Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations in its decision-making structures. The unique structure of the Arctic Council thus serves as good practice for regional and international intergovernmental organizations and has inspired other international negotiations throughout its existence. Indigenous participation in the Arctic Council was not a symbolic concession by Arctic States but the outcome of sustained political struggle and negotiation. Indigenous participation in the Arctic Council is not merely symbolic but essential for ensuring that Arctic governance reflects the realities and priorities of people living in the region.

In articles published in 2025, the International Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Sara Olsvig, and the President of the Saami Council, Per Olof Nutti refer to the Arctic Council as a unique model of international governance shaped significantly by Arctic Indigenous Peoples. Both authors emphasize the historical role of Indigenous political mobilization in securing the Permanent Participant system and argue that Indigenous participation is essential to the legitimacy, effectiveness, and future development of Arctic cooperation.

Both Sara Olsvig and Per Olof Nutti present the Arctic Council as a distinctive model of international governance in which Arctic Indigenous Peoples hold an institutionalized and influential role that extends beyond symbolic participation: they are not simply stakeholders within Arctic politics but political actors and diplomatic agents in their own right who have actively shaped the development of Arctic cooperation. Both authors trace this influence back to the international Indigenous mobilization that began in the 1970s when Indigenous organizations began building transnational political cooperation across the circumpolar North and later successfully demanded a formal role within emerging Arctic governance structures.

The Important Role of Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic Council

A central theme is the significance of the “unusually strong and influential position” of Permanent Participant status, which allows Indigenous Peoples to participate directly and continuously in decision-making processes alongside the eight Arctic States. Olsvig highlights that this engagement model is internationally unique and distinct and emerged through sustained Indigenous advocacy that insisted that Arctic governance could not be legitimate without Indigenous representation. Similarly, Nutti argues that Indigenous participation is essential for ensuring that Arctic governance reflects the realities, priorities, and knowledge systems of Arctic communities. The articles highlight the face that Indigenous knowledge, priorities, and perspectives have consequently become deeply integrated into the Council’s scientific work, environmental governance, and policy development.

At the same time, Nutti introduces a more critical perspective regarding the limitations of the current governance structure given that Permanent Participant participation in the consensus is not fully formalized on paper, while acknowledging the considerable informal influence acquired by them. The article therefore advocates discussion on reforms that would further strengthen Indigenous authority within Arctic governance institutions.

Together, Olsvig and Nutti argue that the legitimacy, effectiveness, and future resilience of the Arctic Council depend on maintaining and strengthening Indigenous participation. They position the Council as a rare example of inclusive international cooperation in which Indigenous Peoples have achieved meaningful institutional influence and where their knowledge, rights, and political agency are embedded within governance structures, while also emphasizing that the future of Arctic cooperation will depend on continuing to strengthen this inclusive and collaborative model while remaining focused on the needs, rights, and resilience of Arctic communities.

The Arctic Council political-level meetings have currently been on hold since 2022, while scientific and Working Group-level meetings have resumed virtually. Notably, following the announcement of the pause, none of the eight Arctic member states have altered their membership or rejected any of their participation in the cooperation, as happened in other international fora. All eight states have maintained a political will to engage in the Arctic Council, and, together with Permanent Participants, they have negotiated methods for decision-making and gradually resumed work in the Arctic Council Working Groups.

For more information, see the chapters on the Arctic Council in The Indigenous World 2025

The post Indigenous Peoples’ role in the Arctic Council appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

The report ignores the collective aspect of justice, thus preventing changes that could ensure access to justice for Indigenous Women. The report also says nothing about the six essential interrelated components of access to justice: justiciability, availability, accessibility, good quality, provision of remedies for victims, and accountability of justice systems. In addition to being listed in Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) General Recommendation. No. 39, these components are also applicable in the case of Indigenous Women and girls.

One of the fundamental root causes of the injustice suffered by Indigenous Women in Nepal is the lack of recognition of their legal personality, disregarding the distinct identity and their principal role as custodians of the Indigenous collective identity, culture, heritage (tangible and intangible), language, knowledge, civilization, biodiversity, and lands, territories and resources. Women make up 50.4% of the population of Nepal, of which 37.5% are Adivasi Janajati Women. According to the 2021 population census, the Indigenous population comprises 35.2%, and Indigenous Women account for approximately 18%, of the total national population.

Pillars of Sovereignty and Guardians of Nature

Unlike Indigenous Women, the Constitution of Nepal recognizes Dalit women (members of the lowest caste groups in the traditional caste hierarchy) with equal access to privileges such as participation in all State bodies, based on the principle of proportional inclusion; special measures for employment, representation, and participation; resource provision for the traditional occupations, knowledge, skills, and technology of the Dalit community; and land provision for landless Dalit, etc. The right to social justice is not, however, guaranteed to Indigenous Women as they are not recognized in the constitution in the same way as Dalit women are.

Access to justice in the context of Indigenous Peoples is closely linked to the collective exercise of sovereignty over lands, territories, and natural resources. Indigenous Women are pillars of sovereignty and custodians of nature, a cornerstone of Indigenous jurisprudence. Moreover, Indigenous Women hold pivotal decision-making roles in households, communities, and cultural affairs, which are under critical challenge from colonial laws and practices.

In the customary system of the Magar Indigenous people, natural features are given female names, such as Khagar or Kuthi (the Himalayas), Boki (the hills), Kaanta (the foothills) and so on with forests, trees, waters and streams.

In the customary system of the Magar Indigenous people, natural features are given female names, such as Khagar or Kuthi (the Himalayas), Boki (the hills) and Kaanta (the foothills).

One example of this is the religious belief of the Yakthung (Limbu) Indigenous people, which is closely linked to nature. In their belief system of Mundhum, “Tambhungma” is a forest deity, and the forest belongs to her (and not to human beings). Tambhungma represents the supreme power of women to maintain the physical, mental, and spiritual life of humans in balance with nature. When someone falls sick, Tambhungma must be worshipped, and permission must be obtained before taking and using the forest’s products. The daytime is designated for human beings and the night for Tambhungma; human activities are therefore strictly prohibited in the forest at night.

In the customary system of the Magar Indigenous people, natural features are given female names, such as Khagar or Kuthi (the Himalayas), Boki (the hills), Kaanta (the foothills) and so on with forests, trees, waters and streams. In the Magar customary system, which is still practised in Atharah Magarat (the 18 regions or kingdoms of the Magyar people), known as Kachahari, women participate equally in land and resource management, including decision-making.

Towards a Paradigm Shift in Law

Another example of how Indigenous Women’s belonging and cultural identity are reflected differently from the mainstream society can be seen in names. A woman’s surname in Hindu castes (the majority religion in Nepal) changes after marriage whereas in Indigenous customary practice the woman retains her communal identity (both her community belonging and her collective rights). The state laws, however, fail to recognize these aspects of Indigenous Women’s identity, belonging, and role in spiritual practices. Respect for all women, irrespective of their origins, caste, ethnicity, creed, linguistic groups, communities, or denomination, thus requires a paradigm shift in law.

The constitution does not explicitly define what access to justice is and nor does it clarify the six essential interrelated components of access to justice, although it does recognize the right to justice as a fundamental right. The constitution lists criminal justice-related elements but omits the right to a fair trial by an independent, impartial and competent court or judicial body, to which every person is entitled. It also gives the power of exercising justice to the courts and other judicial bodies, in accordance with the constitution, other laws, and recognized principles of justice.

Constitutionally, the courts and other judicial bodies are responsible for delivering justice. The constitution does not, however, recognize the customary justice system, widely practised in Indigenous communities (which have almost no access to formal judicial mechanisms). The constitution not only closes the door on Indigenous jurisprudence but it also denies the Indigenous justice system, which guarantees access to justice in the community. This creates a structural barrier for Indigenous Women in accessing justice, since most Indigenous Women live in rural areas, while the courts are located in the city.

While procedural fairness is therefore an integral part of access to justice, Indigenous Women are, in practice, excluded from the system.

Structural Barriers: Language, Fees, and the Judicial System

Indigenous Women are the victims of inhumane treatment, violence, trafficking and exploitative systems such as Kamlari (bonded labour among Tharu women). Data reveals that Indigenous Women and girls are trafficked at an alarming rate: they make up 70% of the trafficking victims rescued by non-governmental organizations. The Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2007, fails to criminalize all forms of trafficking or establish standardized victim identification protocols. According to the annual report of the Auditor General’s Office (2019-2020), only 19.4% of cases are ever resolved: 10.4% result in a conviction and 8.9% in an acquittal. The court proceedings are extremely slow, and it is hard to obtain justice in trafficking cases.

Alongside this, the court proceedings are not culturally appropriate for Indigenous Women: the official language is Khas Nepali (which is not the mother tongue of Indigenous Women), while court and lawyer fees are prohibitive. On top of this, the courts, in which the dominant caste groups are overrepresented, are largely patriarchal and shaped by the jurisprudence of the Hindu caste system, shaped by institutionalized colonization and racism.

Indigenous Peoples, and women in particular, are thus disproportionately victimized. There are currently 19 presiding judges in the Supreme Court, of which 17 are from the Khas Arya group and only two are Indigenous. In addition, these two Indigenous judges are from the Newar Indigenous people, which is just one of 60 officially-recognized Indigenous Peoples. This structure of representation, along with the influence of the caste system, limits its capacity to ensure access to justice for all.

Towards a Paradigm Shift in Law

The provision of social justice as a fundamental right in the constitution provides for the right to participate in State bodies on an inclusive basis. This applies to 16 categories of people who are economically, socially, and educationally disadvantaged, including Indigenous Peoples and Khas Arya (the dominant caste group). A reservation (quota system) is similarly institutionalized in the constitution to support social justice. There is, however, no guarantee that Indigenous Women are entitled to benefit from these provisions.

In conclusion, hurdles exist in Indigenous Women’s access to justice and are institutionalized in the constitution and laws, which systematically fail to recognize these people’s distinct collective identity/existence. The justice system in Nepal thus colonizes, assimilates, and subjugates them, compelling them to remain in a subordinate position. The constitution and laws relating to access to justice likewise do not recognize Indigenous jurisprudence, Indigenous feminist jurisprudence, their justice systems, or the role of Indigenous Women as custodians of lands and territories.

These are all cornerstones of exercising the rights to self-determination, sovereignty, and freedom from all kinds of discrimination, marginalization, exclusion, and structural violence. Recognition of self-determination and non-discrimination, along with the collective identity of Indigenous Women, their role as custodians of nature, Indigenous jurisprudence and justice administration forms the bedrock of access to justice for Indigenous Women.

The Indigenous Women of Nepal meanwhile live in hope that these rights will one day be fully recognized.

The post Access to Justice for Indigenous Women in Nepal appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Contemporary Sámi political organization is structured into two main layers. The first consists of State-established representative institutions, above all the Sámi parliaments in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The second consists of Sámi civil society, including the Saami Council, national associations, reindeer herding organizations, cultural institutions, youth organizations, media and academic institutions.

Norway, Sweden and Finland have each recognized the Sámi in constitutional or quasi-constitutional terms. In Norway, the Constitution (Article 108) requires the State authorities to create conditions enabling the Sámi, as an Indigenous People, to preserve and develop their language, culture and way of life. In Finland, the Constitution protects the right of the Sámi, as an Indigenous People, to maintain and develop their own language and culture, and provides for linguistic and cultural self-government within their homeland. In Sweden, the Instrument of Government states that opportunities shall be promoted for the Sámi people and for ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities to preserve and develop a cultural and social life of their own.

These provisions confirm that Sámi language, culture and society are connected to the States’ legal obligations. In this way, the Sámi right to self-determination is implicitly embedded in the constitutional provision as its realization necessarily depends on the active participation and agency of the Sámi themselves. At the same time, constitutional recognition does not, in and of itself, imply full decision-making authority. The practical/central question lies in determining how far recognition is translated into legislation, budgets and administrative practice.

The Sámi Parliament in Norway

The Sámi Parliament in Norway was opened in Kárášjohka in 1989 after a long political process, strongly influenced by the Alta conflict and by the work of the Sámi Rights Committee. The legal basis lies in the Sámi Act of 1987, which established the Sámi Parliament as a body democratically-elected by the Sámi in Norway. The Parliament has 39 representatives elected from seven constituencies every fourth year, at the same time as Norwegian parliamentary elections. The plenary assembly is the supreme body, and the executive branch is the Governing Council, led by the President of the Sámi Parliament. In Norway, elections include both Sámi parties and Sámi lists from the country’s parties.

The Norwegian Sámi Parliament manages grant schemes and administrative tasks in areas such as language, culture, education and heritage. It also influences policy through consultations with State authorities. It is not a legislature in the same sense as the Norwegian Parliament; its power combines democratic legitimacy, delegated responsibility, budgetary influence and consultation rights.

The Sámi Parliament in Sweden

The Sámi Parliament in Sweden was established in 1993 under the Sámi Parliament Act and has its main headquarters in Giron. It has 31 members elected every four years through a separate/independent Sámi election. The plenary is the elected political body, while a Board, led by the President, functions as the executive leadership. The Swedish elections are organized through Sámi parties and electoral lists rather than through the national party system.

A defining feature of the Swedish model is the Parliament’s dual role. It is both a popularly elected Sámi body and a State administrative authority under the Swedish government. This means that it represents Sámi political interests while also carrying out State administrative tasks related to culture, language and reindeer husbandry. This dual role gives the Parliament a formal place within the State administration but it also limits institutional independence because its budget, mandate and administrative framework are controlled by the State.

The Sámi Parliament in Finland

In Finland, the current legal form of the Sámi Parliament dates from 1996, replacing a Sámi representative body established in the 1970s. It is based in Anár, within the Sajos Sámi Cultural Centre. The Parliament has 21 members and four deputy members, elected every four years. Its plenum is the supreme body and this normally meets several times a year. The plenum elects an Executive Board, led by the President. The Finnish system is less party based than the Norwegian and Swedish systems. Candidates are elected as individuals, and local networks, language communities, livelihood interests tend to matter more than formal party affiliation. The Sámi Parliament Act links the institution to constitutional provisions on Sámi linguistic and cultural self-government in their homeland.

In 2025, Finland adopted a long-awaited reform of the Sámi Parliament Act, replacing the 1995 Act, which had become outdated and was giving rise to disputes over interpretation. The reform entered into force on 1 August 2025 with the aim of strengthening the realization of Sámi self-determination and improving the conditions for linguistic and cultural autonomy and for the work of the Finnish Sámi Parliament. Among its key amendments are revised rules on the electoral roll, the establishment of an autonomous and independent review board for electoral roll matters, and a clarified obligation for public authorities to negotiate with the Sámi Parliament. The Finnish Sámi Parliament therefore has a legally important role in negotiations with public authorities. The Act requires authorities to cooperate and negotiate with the Sámi Parliament in matters that may be of specific significance to the Sámi people.

Consultation Procedures and the Role of Civil Society

Across all three states, the Sámi parliaments are democratically elected and institutionally recognized, yet their authority remains limited. They do not control the main legislative frameworks for land use, energy, mining, infrastructure, fisheries, taxation or welfare. This creates a structural gap between recognition and power. Consultation mechanisms are therefore central. Norway, Sweden and Finland all have consultation procedures for matters affecting the Sámi ,although these procedures, while important, do not fully implement Free, Prior and Informed Consent. In practice, their strength depends on timing, information, resources, the inclusion of affected Sámi communities and whether the State is prepared to alter or stop planned measures.

Sámi civil society is an essential part of Sámi governance. The Saami Council, founded in 1956, is a voluntary non-governmental organization with member organizations in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Before the establishment of the Nordic Sámi parliaments, the Saami Council was the main cross-border representative Sámi body. Today, it continues to work internationally from a pan-Sámi civil society perspective. Reindeer herding organizations, duodji (Sámi traditional handicraft) organizations, cultural institutions, youth bodies and language organizations all contribute to policy development and public debate. Sámi media also play an important role in political and cultural life.

This broader civil society landscape contributes to the overall balance and diversity of Sámi political representation. The Sámi parliaments have electoral legitimacy and formal channels of dialogue with State authorities, while civil society organizations complement this role by contributing additional voices, expertise and forms of representation. Although they do not hold the same formal mandate, these organizations can play an important role in mobilizing communities, offering constructive criticism, articulating concerns from different parts of Sámi society and raising issues in Nordic and international arenas.

Truth and reconciliation processes

Norway, Sweden and Finland have all established truth or truth and reconciliation processes concerning State policies towards the Sámi although they differ in scope and timing. In Norway, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was appointed by the Storting in 2018 to investigate Norwegianization policy and injustices against the Sámi, Kvens/Norwegian Finns and Forest Finns. It delivered its report on 1 June 2023. In November 2024, the Storting followed up with a formal apology and decisions intended to begin addressing the Commission’s findings.

In Sweden, the government decided to establish a Truth Commission for the Sámi People in 2021, and its members were appointed in 2022. The Commission is tasked with mapping and examining State policy towards the Sámi from an historical perspective and its consequences for this community. Its final report was originally expected in 2025 but the mandate has been extended and it is now due by 1 October 2026.

In Finland, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Concerning the Sámi People was appointed in 2021 following negotiations between the State, the Sámi Parliament and the Skolt Sámi Siida Council. It submitted its final report on 4 December 2025 after consultations with almost 400 Sámi people and the commissioning of 25 studies.

These processes show that the Nordic states are increasingly acknowledging that assimilation policies were not isolated historical mistakes. Their effects are ongoing in terms of language, education, health, identity, livelihoods, public attitudes and institutional trust. Truth-telling, however, is only the beginning. Reconciliation depends on implementation: legal reforms, resources, language revitalization, land-use governance, repatriation and education.

The post Sámi Governance and Political Organization in the Nordic Countries appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Although much of the Ayoreo people have already been settled in missions and confined to small territorial enclaves, various groups have maintained their independence and autonomy from the colonising world thanks to the vastness of the forests. The silvícolas (“forest dwellers”), the “uncontacted”, the “isolated”, the “naked”, the pyta jovái, or simply the “wild Moros”, had not yet been affected by the transformations that would intensify in the decades to come. However, the conditions that enabled these groups to remain outside the dominant global system have been steadily eroded over the past twenty-five years.

Beyond protected wilderness areas, the Chaco has undergone rapid transformation under pressure from agribusiness, the hydrocarbon industry, mining and, more recently, the expansion of modern transport infrastructure. In 2000, the northern Chaco still retained 87 per cent of its native forests, savannahs and grasslands. Today, only 52 per cent remains: 42 per cent in the form of highly fragmented forests, much of which have largely lost their ecological function, and just 10 per cent within protected wilderness areas as more extensive forest remnants. It is no exaggeration to say that the northern Paraguayan Chaco is now little more than a scattered mosaic of what, only twenty-five years ago, constituted an invaluable natural heritage.

The Ayoreo People and the Last Transformation

Like other peoples of the Chaco, the Ayoreo understand the passage of time through profound transformations that are preserved in oral histories, ancestral memory and collective memory. What is taking place today may well be understood as “the last transformation”: a process through which the known world collapses and a new one emerges, becoming the point of departure from which the stories of the present begin to be told. Each transformation has entailed both the collapse of an existing world and the emergence of a new way of life. The memory of these catastrophic events strengthens the Ayoreo people’s capacity to adapt to new realities, overcome the trauma of upheaval and continue to exist as a people, transcending the pain and terror experienced by individuals during each transformation.

By tracking the movements of groups living in voluntary isolation, we can observe an ongoing process of adaptation to the changes affecting the forest and its conversion into vast cattle pastures. This does not necessarily imply acceptance of the new reality. Rather, it reflects forms of resistance and adjustment in the ways life and territory are lived and understood, while the territory itself has not yet lost its meaning as a being with whom humans interact. This latest transformation is still unfolding and the risk that it may become a final and irreversible stage is increasingly imminent.

Pressure from neighbouring landowners and new occupants is constant, forcing communities to sell their natural assets—converted into economic resources—or lease portions of their territories in order to survive.

Pressure from neighbouring landowners and new occupants is constant, forcing communities to sell their natural assets or lease portions of their territories in order to survive.

What’s more, a sequential analysis of the Land Use Plans submitted by landowners and companies to obtain environmental licences for their projects indicates that, if implemented, they will trigger an accelerated process of fragmentation over the next five years, far more severe than anything witnessed to date. The outlook towards 2030 is therefore deeply concerning for the individuals and groups of the Ayoreo people who continue to live apart from modern society. Nor does it offer much hope for those communities confined to small tracts of land owned either by themselves or by the Paraguayan Indigenous Institute (INDI).

Pressure from neighbouring landowners and new occupants is constant, forcing communities to sell their natural assets—converted into economic resources—or lease portions of their territories in order to survive. Far from providing a solution, this strategy often becomes a catalyst for internal conflict, social fragmentation and violence. The process of adapting to the world that has confined them has not yet fundamentally transformed their internal political organisation, which remains rooted in the family as the basic unit of survival and in forms of leadership shaped by the ability to engage with and navigate the Western world.

The Deepening of Extractivism

Over the past eight years, these transformations have intensified markedly as national extractivist policies have deepened and efforts have increased to identify new resources for export, attract investment and reposition Paraguay within the global economy. Successive governments—and particularly the administration of President Santiago Peña—have promoted an ambiguous agenda: while reinforcing international commitments to environmental protection and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, they have simultaneously expanded the exploration of mineral and hydrocarbon resources and sought to establish Paraguay among the world’s leading exporters of grain and beef.

These developments have profound consequences for the daily lives of both settled Ayoreo communities and groups living in voluntary isolation. As extractive activities continue to advance, they are left with ever fewer opportunities to shape their own future and define their own path in the face of this latest transformation.

Yet even today, vast areas of the Paraguayan Chaco remain under concession, sustained by the enduring promise of hydrocarbons in a world that is increasingly seeking to move beyond fossil fuels and transform its energy systems.

Yet even today, vast areas of the Paraguayan Chaco remain under concession, sustained by the enduring promise of hydrocarbons in a world that is increasingly seeking to move beyond fossil fuels and transform its energy systems.

A dozen rare earth and lithium exploration projects have spread across the Chaco, with little regard for the territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples and even less for the groups that continue to live in voluntary isolation. Approved by regulatory authorities, these projects are being carried out by four major companies belonging to the same corporate group, which dominates the exploration and extraction of rare minerals across the lowlands of the Americas. This wave of extractive activity also threatens the integrity of one of the region’s most fragile protected areas: Médanos del Chaco National Park.

Hydrocarbons have long served as a powerful driving development myth in the Paraguayan Chaco. Following Paraguay’s victory in the Chaco War in the 1930s—a conflict that claimed more than 90,000 lives—successive concessions were granted to foreign companies for exploration projects that ultimately proved unsuccessful. At best, these efforts led to the discovery of oil and gas reserves in quantities too small to justify the investments required for their extraction and transport. Yet even today, vast areas of the Paraguayan Chaco remain under concession, sustained by the enduring promise of hydrocarbons in a world that is increasingly seeking to move beyond fossil fuels and transform its energy systems.

The Road-Building Boom

The coup de grâce for the world of the Ayoreo groups living in voluntary isolation—and for the collapse of a millennia-old cultural landscape shaped by the many Indigenous Peoples of the Chaco, of whom these Ayoreo groups are the last to remain free and in resistance—is the current boom in road construction and transport infrastructure. The Capricorn Bioceanic Corridor is now being rapidly developed across the Paraguayan Chaco from east to west, with the aim of linking the major production centres of Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo to ports on the Pacific coast of Chile, facilitating trade with Asian markets.

This corridor directly affects the southern portion of Ayoreo territory and indirectly impacts the territory as a whole. From this main transport axis, a network of transversal roads has already been planned to connect agricultural and livestock production areas throughout the northern Chaco to the Pacific route. At the same time, road projects planned in Bolivia and western Brazil seek to connect the Brazilian state of Rondônia to the Pacific coast. These routes would run from north to south through some of the last remaining intangible territories set aside by the Charagua Indigenous Government of the Guaraní People in the Bolivian Chaco for Ayoreo groups living in voluntary isolation, beyond the boundaries of protected areas.

After more than three decades of advances in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, Paraguay still has not formally recognised the presence of groups living in voluntary isolation within its territory who must be protected

After more than three decades of advances in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, Paraguay still has not formally recognised the presence of groups living in voluntary isolation.

This road-building boom is not merely about more paved roads and increased vehicle traffic; it is also transforming the production model, with a strong trend in the northern Chaco towards a shift from extensive cattle ranching to intensive agriculture. For groups living in voluntary isolation, the consequences are drastic: water sources contaminated by agrochemicals, a decline in wildlife populations (a fundamental source of protein for the Ayoreo people), and air pollution in the remaining forest areas (the fragments that remain as refuges for life).

At the same time, these transformations are also reflected in the sphere of rights. After more than three decades of advances in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, Paraguay still has not formally recognised the presence of groups living in voluntary isolation within its territory who must be protected and for whom conditions must be guaranteed so that they can continue living in accordance with their own self-determination. Nor has there been any improvement in the implementation of legislation relating to the rights of Indigenous Peoples who have already been colonised. The right to land and to access the territories necessary for sustaining their lives remains subordinated to the property rights of settlers and, increasingly, of agro-export companies that shape political priorities and decision-making in the northern Paraguayan Chaco.

The Ayoreo Worldview and the Ideologisation of Progress

Finally, it is worth noting that this great transformation, which is set to intensify in the coming years, is driven by the discourse of economic growth and so-called “progress”, which questions and ridicules the belief systems of the peoples of the Chaco and, especially, of the groups that continue to live in voluntary isolation. According to this belief system, everything in the world—living and non-living alike—is a person and must be treated with respect. For this reason, relationships and dialogue must be established in order to access the benefits that these beings may provide to human beings and to make use of them within a framework of respect, harmony and moderation.

In contrast to the accumulation that underpins an individualistic and self-interested liberal logic, this worldview promotes the principle of sharing in order to maintain a just and balanced social order. This ideologisation of “progress” fuels the voracious drive of the West to consume without restraint everything that exists on Earth and mocks Indigenous beliefs through the discourse of economic growth and the (false) needs created by the market. On the contrary, this belief system may offer humanity a way to avoid the destruction of the world—that is, the final stage of this last transformation.

Meanwhile, a quarter of a century into the third millennium, small groups of the Ayoreo people continue to resist and avoid contact with the agents of change that are pushing their world towards collapse and ruin. This steadfast resistance, shared by all groups living in voluntary isolation, emerges as the only hope to which they cling so that the forest does not close in and fall silent, and so that this transformation does not become definitive and final.

The post The Ayoreo People Confront Extractivism in the Paraguayan Chaco appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Located in north-western Argentina, Jujuy has undergone a profound transformation in recent years. It is no longer simply a question of the historical mining of lead and zinc: in the era of electric vehicles and the so-called “energy transition”, the lithium rush in the salt flats and the search for rare earth minerals now coexist with an emerging wine industry and a tourism sector that places increasing pressure on local landscapes. These processes, driven by private investors and supported by reforms tailored to the interests of capital, are directly affecting Indigenous territories and peasant lands, where legal security of tenure is already fragile.

Against this backdrop, representatives of Indigenous and peasant organisations were invited to participate in the workshop “Policies and Strategies for the Defence of Indigenous Territories in Jujuy”, organised together with the Anthropology of Development and Territorial Policies Team at the Institute of Anthropological Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). During the meeting, participants reflected on the socio-environmental conflicts affecting these territories, focusing on the tensions, contradictions and setbacks in national and provincial policies, as well as environmental issues and actions undertaken in defence of the land.

Law 26,160 in the Face of Market Expansion and State Neglect

Indigenous territories are increasingly coming under pressure from economic re-primarisation and extractivism. Decree 749/2024 regulates the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI), granting tax benefits and legal stability for 30 years to large-scale mining, hydrocarbon and energy projects. Between November 2006 and December 2024, Law No. 26,160 on Territorial Emergency acted as a legal truce in Argentina, suspending evictions and mandating the survey of Indigenous territories. However, in Jujuy, this policy has become a labyrinth of incomplete files and delays that leave territories in an extremely vulnerable position.

For David, from the Rodero community, the survey process has functioned for almost 20 years as a shield against a State that threatens dispossession whenever “there is no official document”. Faced with the perception that the law has lost its force, David stresses that resistance is rooted in identity and in the inhabitants’ historical attachment to the land: “Communities need to secure their territorial organisation and then obtain title deeds. If you do not have a document, they can take the land away from you.” This state debt is far from an isolated case.

In 2023, the Red Puna network denounced the fact that the legal-cadastral survey had never been completed. These delays tend to deepen in territories where land is becoming increasingly valuable to private interests. In Chucalezna, Florencia recounts how a neighbour’s attempt to expand vineyards and tourism projects onto a family house dating back to the nineteenth century ultimately blocked the delivery of their technical file: “That is why we do not have the file: the conflict emerged and the process was interrupted. But we did complete the survey!” The current situation reveals a critical paradox: while the State delays legal recognition, pressure from the mining, wine-producing and tourism sectors continues to intensify, forcing communities to defend their permanence on the land with their own bodies.

Free, Prior and Informed Consultation as a Simulation

Argentina possesses a strong legal framework for Indigenous Peoples, yet it lacks operative legislation on communal land ownership and prior consultation. This legislative vacuum turns ILO Convention 169 into a solitary tool of resistance. In theory, Free, Prior and Informed Consultation should grant communities a leading role; in practice, however, it has become an administrative simulation that companies and the State frequently ignore or delegate to private actors.

For participants in the workshop, the diagnosis is clear: the provincial State operates according to a logic of “selective presence”. It is absent when it comes to ensuring that consultation processes are legitimate, yet it intervenes swiftly to authorise mining exploration. This dynamic revives a colonial imaginary in which Indigenous territory is portrayed as a “sacrificial space” in the name of economic growth, reinforcing a form of discrimination that strips community knowledge and autonomy of their value.

The communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc have created their own biocultural protocol: Kachi Yupi (“Footprints of the Salt”). This document affirms the sacred right to water and establishes that decisions must pass through the General Assembly of the Basin.

The communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc have created their own biocultural protocol: Kachi Yupi (“Footprints of the Salt”).

Meanwhile, environmental impact assessments are financed by the very companies involved, and communities perceive them as documents designed to support external interests. Consultation processes are often carried out in ways that disrupt local practices: fragmented meetings are convened, the timing of community assemblies is ignored, and only limited information is provided. Daniel captures this sense of helplessness as follows: “We say that we are the owners of everything, but then a place is declared a World Heritage Site and nobody consults us about anything. No one defends us.”

In response to the state vacuum, the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc have created their own biocultural protocol: Kachi Yupi (“Footprints of the Salt”). This document affirms the sacred right to water and establishes that decisions must pass through the General Assembly of the Basin. However, Decree 7751/2023 reduces consultation to an “informational meeting” between companies and communities. For Flavia, president of Santuario Tres Pozos, the State ignores the community protocol: “Simply receiving them is considered consent. Everything is about negotiating quickly in exchange for a few small things: a projector, a generator.”

Snapshots of Dispossession: the State, Mining Companies and the Wine Industry

Socio-environmental conflict in Jujuy has ceased to be merely a dispute over land and has become a struggle for survival. In a context where water and territory are increasingly threatened by extractive, real-estate and state interests, Indigenous communities are deploying strategies that range from legal advocacy to direct action and territorial mobilisation. “The State handed the land over to multinational corporations with us still living on it,” summarises Débora, from the Casa Grande community.

In the area controlled by the El Aguilar mining company, the effects of extractivism are undeniable: tailings dams filled with toxic waste and a water shortage severe enough to threaten life itself. Anabella, from Abra Pampa, denounces what she describes as a “silent genocide”, including lead contamination affecting children within a dismantled public health system. Griselda, from Finca El Pongo, recounts how a model of family farming sustained across three generations was swept aside by medicinal cannabis ventures and lithium industrial parks. Here, the State is not absent; rather, it actively facilitates displacement: police guard Griselda’s home while machinery tears up the soil and the community is denied access to irrigation water.

When community institutions are co-opted by corporate interests, the response is often one of fission: communities split in order to create new organisational units and thereby recover autonomy in their struggle.  

The real-estate pressure on Indigenous territories and communities has even fractured internal ties between relatives and neighbours.

In the Quebrada de Humahuaca, real-estate pressure disguised as “wine-producing development” is generating new forms of dispossession. In the Chucalezna community, the expansion of wineries and tourism-related property developments has altered the course of rivers: these topographical transformations are triggering mudslides that bury crops and homes. Florencia and Amalia denounce the privatisation of community water springs and highlight the unequal means being deployed: “They want to take our water away. We carried out the work with shovels and pickaxes; the businessman does it with machinery.”

This real-estate pressure on Indigenous territories and communities has even fractured internal ties between relatives and neighbours. When community institutions are co-opted by corporate interests — as in the case of delegates who are simultaneously employed by wineries — the response is often one of fission: communities split in order to create new organisational units (as occurred in Antigal de Moya) and thereby recover autonomy in their struggle, even when this entails a painful fragmentation.

“Sowing Water” and “Walking the Land”: Strategies of Resistance

Faced with abandonment, communities have begun to build solutions from within. The struggle often starts on paper, through the filing of reports and complaints, and the forging of alliances with universities and NGOs. It is a process of collective learning in which communities must navigate bureaucratic labyrinths and identify potential allies. Yet when formal channels are exhausted, protest shifts to the body and the road: from hunger strikes and blockades to the seizure of heavy machinery. In the absence of justice, mobilisation and collective organisation become the most effective tools. “There is strength in being united within the Council,” remarks one community member.

In the Puna, the Women Defenders of the Natural Habitat Group (from Casa Grande, Vizcarra and El Portillo) has redefined protest by transforming it into active environmental stewardship. Faced with the decline of the queñua — a native tree capable of storing large quantities of water and devastated by mining activities and road construction — these women have embarked on a process of environmental restoration and healing. “Sowing water for future generations” is the slogan under which they committed to planting 15,000 queñua trees during 2025. This process also required an internal “cleansing”: they had to seek leadership independent from the mining company, since, until 2017, their own representatives had been employees of the firm.

For Diego and David resistance is above all about remaining on the land. Community-based tourism and the strengthening of rural schools have emerged as strategies to prevent the exodus of young people.

For Diego and David resistance is above all about remaining on the land. Community-based tourism and the strengthening of rural schools have emerged as strategies to prevent the exodus of young people.

Another form of resistance was the “Women’s March in Defence of Pachamama”, held in August 2025. From Laguna de Pozuelos, women walked 282 kilometres to San Salvador de Jujuy to denounce how mining dismantles networks of life and traditional ways of living. This action was not merely an act of protest, but also a process of intercommunity weaving that reaffirmed the central role of women as guardians of the territory.

For Diego and David, from the Rodero community, resistance is above all about remaining on the land. In the face of tourism-driven gentrification and extractive pressure, community-based tourism and the strengthening of rural schools have emerged as strategies to prevent the exodus of young people: “I studied in Tucumán and came back because I missed the community. Being on the territory is the best form of defence. We work so as not to lose our identity.” David adds a demographic urgency to this vision: “We know the territory, but we need people to stay.” A territory that remains inhabited and sustained by people with a strong sense of identity is far more difficult to sacrifice than an “empty space” on investors’ maps.

Imagining Other Possible Futures

However, not all strategies are embraced unanimously. A growing phenomenon has emerged: the fragmentation of communities. Faced with internal tensions or political co-optation by companies, groups of community members — such as those of the newly formed Antigal de Moya community — have chosen to separate from their original organisations. While these ruptures seek to safeguard the autonomy of those committed to resisting, they also reveal the capacity of the extractive model to erode the cohesion of the Indigenous Peoples who inhabit north-western Argentina.

In sum, the report produced by the Anthropology of Development and Territorial Policies team at the Institute of Anthropological Sciences not only documents the conflicts and challenges that Indigenous and peasant communities face on a daily basis, but also opens a horizon of possibilities, inviting us to imagine other ways of inhabiting and relating to the environment. The experiences shared by Indigenous and peasant communities in Jujuy make clear that territory is not merely a resource for extractive planning, but a living fabric of histories that resists being reduced to the logic of the market.

By placing local and academic knowledge in dialogue, the report sheds light on practices, experiences, forms of resistance and territorial strategies that are often silenced: from the creation of autonomous biocultural protocols to the collective planting of queñua trees. The experience in Jujuy demonstrates that resistance is written through the body and through permanence on the land. It also underscores a shared certainty: in the face of a model that projects “empty spaces”, rooted identity and the effective occupation of territory constitute the strongest frontier against dispossession.

You can read the report by the Anthropology of Development and Territorial Policies team on the website of the Institute of Anthropological Sciences.

The post “Being on the Land Is Our Best Defence”: Indigenous and Peasant Territorial Resistance in Jujuy appeared first on Debates Indígenas.