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indigenous People are used to adapting, so when the power went out at their kickoff event at this year’s UN climate talks, they adapted. Participants from around the world sweat through songs, dances and prayers, improvise without microphones and cool themselves with fans made of paper or leaves.
But the ill-timed blackout casts doubt on whether this year’s summit – dubbed the “Indigenous Peoples’ COP” – will deliver on organizers’ promise to put them front and center at the event. Amazon rainforest Where many indigenous groups live.
Indigenous peoples protect much of the world’s biodiversity and are among those who contribute least to climate change, yet suffer disproportionately from the devastation it causes.
“We are working within a system and we are working within an institution that we know was not created for us,” said Thalia Yarina Cachimuel, a Kichwa-Otavalo member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a global group of indigenous peoples around the world. “We have to work 10 times harder to make sure our voices are part of the space.”
This year’s climate talks, which run until November 21, are not expected to produce any ambitious new agreements. Instead, organizers and analysts have framed this year’s conference as an “implementation COP”, aimed at putting past promises into action.
A conference that is not easy to attend
Climate talks – known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP30 for this year’s edition – have long excluded or sidelined indigenous peoples.
Many peoples are not strongly represented in governments that often violently colonize their people. Others face language barriers or travel difficulties that prevent them from accessing conferences such as COP30.
The Brazilian government said hosting this year’s summit in Belém was partly a tribute to indigenous groups skilled at living sustainably in the earth’s wildest places.
But like other activists, indigenous groups are traditionally not included in climate negotiations unless individual members are part of a country’s delegation. Brazil has included them and urged other countries to do the same. It was not immediately clear how many people did so in Belém.
But there’s a big difference between being visible and being at the center of the conversation, Cachimuel said.
“Sometimes that’s where the difference is, right? Like who gets to go to the high-level environment, who gets to go to the high-level dialogues, you know, who are the people who are meeting with states and governments,” he said.
They were concerned that inclusion efforts would not continue at future COPs.
Edson Kranak of the Kranak people and Brazil manager of the indigenous rights group Cultural Survival said he had seen less participation than expected from indigenous people. He attributed this partly to the difficulty of finding a place to stay in Belém, a small city that was struggling to rapidly expand accommodation options for COP30.
He said it is disappointing when indigenous people are not involved in developing policies from the beginning but are expected to comply with them.
“We want to be involved in designing these policies, we want to be involved in actually dreaming up solutions,” Krenck said.
fight to be heard
At the opening of the Indigenous Peoples Pavilion, lack of electricity was not the only issue. The presenters had to make do without an official translator.
Wis-wa-cha, a presenter from the Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth lands, said that not paying attention to such details can make people feel “constantly dismissed in very passive ways.”
Brazil’s presidential office did not immediately respond to questions about why no translators were available for the event. It said they worked to fix the power outage as quickly as possible.
World leaders should focus on direct financing to communities that need support, said Lucas Che Ikal, who was representing Ak’Tenamit, an organization that supports education, climate change and health initiatives in indigenous and rural villages. guatemala,
He knows that often the agreements reached at previous COPs do not have a direct positive impact on the lives of indigenous peoples. He hopes it will be different this year.
“I’m an optimist,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “There is a perspective that yes, it can give good results and the governments who are making decisions can take favorable decisions.”
Most of all, he said he hopes that decision-makers at this COP can hear “the voices of indigenous villages, local communities and all the villages of the world where they live in poverty and who share the impacts of climate change.”
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