This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online and APTN.
For years, Maureen Penjueli, who is indigenous iTaukei from Fiji, has watched her homeland survive devastating cyclonesand floods caused by unusually heavy rainfall. She watched as the coastal town of Vunidogoloa was forced moved inland to escape rising seas, and as the longtime head of the non-governmental advocacy group Pacific Network on GlobalizationPenjueli knows climate change will mean more extreme weather for her Pacific island home.
Penjueli is still skeptical when she hears that “clean energy” is being presented as a solution to the climate crisis. She thinks of the bright blue waters around Fiji and how companies are eager to scrape the seabed for potato-shaped nodules rich in minerals that can be used to build electric cars in rich countries, and she worries that her iTaukei people will suffer from face any depth. -sea mining pollution.
“It is extremely critical that people understand that the transition is anything but fair and anything but fair,” Penjueli said.
That’s why this month Penjueli flew from Suva, Fiji to New York City to meet with fellow indigenous activists before the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs, or UNPFII, the largest annual global gathering of indigenous peoples. Officially, this year’s forum is focused on self-determination for indigenous youth, but climate change looms large: on the opening day, the outgoing UNPFII chair shared a new report on the green transitionwhich raises another alarm about the risks facing indigenous peoples and their lands, not only from climate change, but also the projects intended to counter global warming.
“The current green economy model is a problem rather than a solution for many indigenous peoples,” the report said. “The concept of a transition to a green economy maintains the same logic of extraction that causes states and the private sector to overlook the collective rights of indigenous peoples in the pursuit of national interests.”
In Guatemala, a court recently found a nickel mine in violation Native land rights; In Norway and the USA., Indigenous peoples have endured constant battles with green energy developers; and indigenous Igorot of the Philippines are concerned about displacement from nickel mining.
“We actually support the transition away from fossil fuels to green energy and we need to do it quickly,” said Joan Carling, who is Igorot from the Philippines and serves as executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group. Indigenous Peoples’ Rights International. “But if we do it quickly by ignoring and violating the rights of indigenous peoples, we will not be able to effectively address the climate crisis.”
More than half of the world’s minerals that could serve as alternative energy sources and help countries stop burning fossil fuels – known as transition minerals – are located on or near lands and territories managed by indigenous peoples, according to a 2023 study in Nature Sustainability. These include lithium, cobalt, nickel, uranium and many other critical minerals that will require extractive mining with numerous environmental impacts.
Those impacts are why Carling helped the Conference on indigenous peoples and the just transition, the two-day event that Penjueli attended just before the forum. After a weekend of discussions, the group came up with a statement urging state governments, investors and corporations, and energy utilities and regulators to respect indigenous rights.
They called for a ban on deep-sea mining, as well as any mining on sacred sites, and reminded government officials that indigenous peoples have the right to freely consent to projects on their land before projects are underway, and that they also have the right to say no. Lack of consent has long been a problem with development and many see the green energy industry continuing the same tendency to not do enough to inform indigenous communities about upcoming projects, and to prioritize profits over human rights.
The group’s statement was part of a broader message echoed throughout the auditoriums, conference rooms and corridors of the United Nations last week: The “green economy” is not working for indigenous people. “Clean energy” is not actually clean. And the world’s shift to a mineral-based energy economy comes at the expense of indigenous peoples and their lands. This is a message that has been shared many times before, but which is becoming more urgent as the energy transition accelerates, fueled by billions in funding from China, the USA, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
In the UN Commissioned Report on the Greening of the Economy, experts called for compensation for indigenous peoples’ communities affected by pollution and environmental destruction from green energy operations. They said that long-term economic planning should take place when mining begins in case the operations affect other industries that indigenous peoples rely on – for example, if pollution from deep-sea mining harms fisheries, an economic driver in many Pacific island nations. Experts have also asked for project revenue to be shared after obtaining consent.
“If a community of indigenous peoples chooses to participate in the sharing of benefits, any such agreement must be based on future annual income so that the community receives half or more than half of the percentage of total income for the duration of received the project,” the report said.
They emphasized the need for direct funding for indigenous peoples who manage lands and territories that are home to 80% of the world’s biodiversity and urged state governments and corporations to see indigenous peoples as partners and not obstacles to the transition away from fossil fuels do not.
The authors of the report also criticized how the terminology surrounding the move away from fossil fuels obscures the problems of the transition. “The term ‘just economy’ is nothing more than a slogan from the perspective of most indigenous peoples,” the report said.
Darío Mejia Montalvo, outgoing chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs, said that such terminology hides indigenous people’s lack of involvement in these changes.
“Indigenous people do not believe that many of the climate change mitigation and adaptation measures that have been proposed will ultimately solve climate change because the end result of these policies ultimately harms indigenous peoples,” he said.
That’s what Penjueli fears. She worries about the lack of knowledge about the environmental effects of removing minerals from the seabed and wonders what will happen if something goes wrong: Where will Fiji come up with the money for an environmental cleanup and restitution? And what would happen to the fish her people rely on to eat?
She says it does not make sense for the world to switch from a strategy of bottomless consumption by burning fossil fuels to a similar consumption model based on mineral mining. Already, reports describe the waste of critical minerals: Even as more mines are dug and more lands are cleared, millions of metric tons of copper and aluminum are thrown away in landfills every year instead of being used for renewable energy development. The European Councilwhich sets political priorities in the European Union, has set a non-binding target that by 2030 a quarter of “critical raw materials” consumed should be recycled materials, but experts say more can be done to reuse these valuable minerals .
But what is most frustrating for Penjueli is the idea that her people must sacrifice to save the world. It reminds her of how other Pacific nations were told to sacrifice for world peace, when global powers tested nuclear weapons.
“It is extremely problematic that we are supposed to bear the burden of this transition,” she said.
