Page 32 - GIC Manifesto.m

All of those outcomes are, in fact, “necessarily bad things.”

It is undeniable that indigenous communities will disproportionately suffer from climate change
impacts. GIC will actively pursue and support environmental justice and environmental self-
determination for indigenous communities faced with the catastrophic consequences of climate
change. GIC will urge nation-states to accept the Anaya principles of tribal self-determination
as foundational to this objective, those being the preservation of cultural integrity, recognition
and protection of indigenous lands and resources, support of social welfare and development,
and the strengthening of self-government. Fundamental to environmental justice in this context
is the acknowledgement and commitment to safeguard tribal peoples and preserve their
traditional lands. To do so in the face of climate change requires mitigation strategies to keep
indigenous communities in their traditional homelands, and by doing so, preserving cultural
identities and lifeways. Sacrificing the cultural survival of tribal people by enforced removal is
the lowest common denominator among nation-states’ responses to the climate crisis.
That path of least resistance for nation-states is unacceptable to GIC.

In 2012, the Himba warned, “We experience already climate change. The weather is becoming
more extreme. It is growing hotter and we have less rain. When it rains we have severe floods.
Our land is facing desertification, which means less green food for our animals and less crop
production for our people. The Government of Namibia has not taken any steps to inform us
on climate change, nor has it taken steps to help us with mitigating and adapting to those
changes.” In Oceania, Polynesian leaders have alerted nation-states to the crisis, “We, the
Polynesian Leaders Group, state that our islands and peoples are at the frontline of devastation
from climate change. We are victims of climate change. We must be heard. We call for justice
and our right of survival.” In the 2015 Taputapuatea Declaration on Climate Change, the
Native Hawaiian culture is inseparable from
Polynesian leaders demanded proactive measures to keep global land temperature increases at the land and traditional resources. Master
or below 1.5˚C by 2100. “Today, largely due to human activities and increasing greenhouse gas woodcarver Tau’ Veatupu (right) continues the
legacy of his grandfather, preserving Native
emissions, our ocean is getting warmer, more acidic and its level is rising. We are suffering the Hawaiian culture through carving, while also
progressive decrease in coral vitality, the contamination of our marine life, the erosion of our sustaining his family through his art. Like all
cultural practices on the Pacific Islands,
shorelines, the intensification of cyclones and frequent swell, the new outbreaks of infectious traditional carving and the cultural identity
diseases, and the threats to our habitats,” states the declaration. and knowledge integral to it, will disappear
without those natural resources. Due to climate
change, 90-95% of dryland forests in Hawaii
have already receded, and it is projected that by
2100 ecosystems in the higher elevations, in
wao akua, “the realm of the gods,”
will be disappearing.