Indigenous peoples are no longer ’observers’ at the UNFCCC. As effective ’contributors’ to shaping the plans for the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples’ Platform (The Platform), Indigenous Peoples have unprecedented opportunities to enhance their participation across UNFCCC processes. So what happens now?

A new alliance

At COP24 in Katowice, the Parties passed a landmark decision to establish a Facilitative Working Group (FWG) of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP). The establishment of this group, whose mandate is to create a work plan for the LCIPP and implement its functions, is historic in the context of indigenous movement. It constitutes the beginning of a new partnership with the Parties, based on the principles of equal status of indigenous peoples and Parties, including in leadership roles. Furthermore, the Platform enhances indigenous peoples participation and visibility in UNFCCC’s processes.

For the indigenous peoples, the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB50) started with the gathering of 13 FWG members, six from the Parties and seven indigenous peoples, as well as other indigenous peoples and Parties interested in the Platform.  The first task of the FWG was to develop a two-year work plan for the Platform to be decided by the Parties at the COP25 in Santiago, Chile.

During this meeting, I witnessed the extraordinary process of Indigenous Peoples’ direct contribution to crafting the activities of the LCIPP, as the FWG took an inclusive, open and transparent approach to the development of the work plan. Every idea was considered and reflected in the first draft of the work plan during the meeting. What was also interesting to observe was the layout of the meeting room, which resembled the setup from the Talanoa dialogue, an indigenous way of conducting open, inclusive and transparent dialogue. This may be interpreted as a way of indigenising the conversation on climate change, to help build a relationship with the indigenous peoples. It seemed that the ‘Observer’ tags around the necks of these people no longer characterized their identity in the UNFCCC. The only observer of course, was me, observing the meeting for research purposes. The work plan remains a work in progress at the time of writing.

In the context of UNFCCC, the Platform is one of a number of constituted bodies within the Convention. Others include the Adaptation Committee and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage.  These bodies provide advice and expertise to advance the implementation of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. In practical terms, this not only puts the Indigenous Peoples and the Platform on a radar within and outside of the Convention, but also means that the Platform and by extension, Indigenous Peoples, are now invited to collaborate across various constituted bodies both within and outside the Convention to provide inputs to their respective activities.

What happened to the Spirit of Paris? Indigenous Peoples at COP24 in Katowice, Poland

As the Platform appeared on the radar of the SB50, the response by other constituted bodies was immediate. In the first workshop, a number of constituted bodies within the Convention showed a great deal of interest in the Platform. At the second workshop on collaboration with bodies outside of the Convention, a variety of actors such as UN Specialized Agencies, charities, and universities, offered their ideas for synergy with the Platform. What these interactions indicate is that the work of FWG extends far beyond the implementation of the functions of the Platform. As a constituted body, the recognition also brings about new opportunities for Parties to encounter and understand the value of traditional knowledge, as well as the requirement for Indigenous Peoples to engage effectively with a variety of actors on themes ranging from adaptation and mitigation, technology, methods and observation to loss and damage.

Meanwhile, important discussions continue amongst Parties at SB50. The language of human rights – including those of indigenous peoples – still remains bracketed (i.e. not agreed upon) in many of the key draft texts under consideration, such as on the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Recalling that the Platform is only as strong as the degree to which various decisions by the Parties respect human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples, there remains significant work ahead in terms of lobbying the Parties, in unison with other actors advocating a rights-based approach to climate policy and action. Equalization and protection of indigenous peoples’ knowledge is an important aspect of Indigenous Peoples’ diplomacy in this context.  

Indigenous Peoples embody 80% of the world’s cultural and biological diversity

For the last five years, indigenous peoples have made great sacrifices to contribute to the UNFCCC, taking time away from their families and communities to travel around the world, in order to create a permanent space for indigenous peoples and to get the Platform off the ground. This achievement cannot be underestimated, though everyone knows that this is only the beginning.

Significant work lies ahead in terms of getting the Parties to agree on a more ambitious and bold target to address the adverse effects of climate change. Even more difficult challenges lie ahead for indigenous peoples in attempts to sway the Parties to safeguard their rights. The recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights enhances their capacity to take care of their environments using their own knowledge. We mustn’t forget that indigenous peoples embody and nurture 80% of the world’s cultural and biological diversity.

Just the beginning…

Progress will require close and transparent collaboration between the Indigenous Peoples Caucus and the FWG, so as not to create a disconnect within Indigenous Peoples at the UNFCCC. Indigenous Peoples may now be required to look beyond the Platform in order to cover the gaps as they appear as a consequence of the establishment of the Platform, and the immediate expansion of Indigenous Peoples’ possibilities at the UNFCCC. The Platform opened up many spaces for Indigenous Peoples at the UNFCCC to take their voices beyond the plenary sessions and interact with the Parties to build mutual understanding. It is still unclear how it will pan out, but one thing is certain:  everyone is watching.

Tomohiro Harada is a PhD Fellow at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, focusing on indigenous diplomacies in global politics, specifically Sami diplomacies in global environmental politics.

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Written by Siri Eriksen, Professor at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, NMBU

Humanitarian crises rarely come without some kind of warning. As Saturday 19 August is World Humanitarian Day, we are reminded in many places, there are people living at the precipice of crisis, in need of urgent support and help. Our rapidly changing climate is exacerbating many such crises, and it is in those crises that the most vulnerable that are set to suffer.

The recent Institute of Development Studies Bulletin, ‘Courting Catastrophe? Humanitarian Policy and Practice in a Changing Climate’, calls for humanitarian and climate adaptation policymakers and practitioners to link up to be able to prepare and respond to the threat of climate change and protect the most vulnerable in a much more considered and responsible way.

Reinforcing vulnerability?

Humanitarian crises represent a stark manifestation of human vulnerability to our changing climate. While, humanitarian actions deal directly with such vulnerability by alleviating suffering during crises, there is increasing realisation within the humanitarian sector that short term alleviation is not enough, because such measures often do little to address the causes of vulnerability, and sometimes even reinforce them.

A case in point, there are some food aid and development programmes in Nepal that have inadvertently legitimised unequal power relations in villages and encouraged the dependence of households on wealthier households for food. There is an urgent need, in climate change adaptation and humanitarian actions alike, for a deeper understanding of the context in which these actions are deployed, or risk entrenching power structures and the processes creating vulnerability in the first place.

New approaches within humanitarian aid provide opportunities for addressing vulnerability and inequities in the longer term, such as through building resilient livelihoods and social protection (cash transfer, food relief, public work programs, input subsidies, food subsidies, school feeding, crop and livestock insurance and grain reserves) and forecast-based financing mechanisms. Widening the scope of vulnerability assessments for example, could increase the understanding of humanitarian actions on vulnerability and development pathways.

Rethinking adaptation to climate change

However, it is increasingly clear that adaptation to climate change also requires a rethink. One where adaptation is not treated as a benign exercise that can benefit all, or simply an extension of the humanitarian principles of non-partisanship, but as a process that benefits different people very differently, creating winners and losers in the process.

Climate scientists increasingly argue that big and transformational change is required from fossil fuel intensive and inequitable development towards a more climate resilient future. A future that would ultimately combine mitigation of emissions, equitable development, and reduced vulnerability.

The change that is required is not about ‘us’ (donors, aid organisations, experts, privileged/less vulnerable) transforming ‘them’ (vulnerable groups) by forcing them to shift their livelihoods and practices. On the contrary, humanitarian aid illustrates how transformational adaptation starts with ‘ourselves’. Transformation is about making space for diverse groups to pushback and challenge inequitable power structures, decision making processes and development priorities that keep marginalising them. Fundamentally, it is about fostering the creativity inherent in ordinary vulnerable people’s decision making that can allow alternative, more sustainable approaches to emerge.

For such a shift to be possible, however, change is needed in the political and financial frameworks within which humanitarian actors work. Currently, rigid funding mechanisms and reporting requirements tend to reinforce a sector wise approaches to vulnerability reduction. The focus on measurable results also tends to favour technology type and short term ‘measurable’ actions rather than longer term vulnerability reduction.

Let the locals lead the way

Importantly, humanitarian action – even if effective at local vulnerability reduction – does not on its own constitute adaptation. It is only one of several types of actions in many spheres of societal development. The responsibility for climate change adaptation cannot be offloaded on neither humanitarian actors nor the recipients of humanitarian aid.

Nevertheless, humanitarian interventions will always impact and influence the prospects for transformational change, and because of that cannot be delinked from adaptation. It is by showing alternative ways of doing things locally, and how such alternatives can be supported, that the humanitarian system can and should be a driving force in creating adaptation. They could show the development and climate change communities how adaptation that lets vulnerable groups participate actively leads to a more sustainable and fairer future.

Siri Eriksen is Project Leader for the recently completed project ‘Courting Catastrophe? Humanitarian Policy and Practice in a Changing Climate’. This blog article is also published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), a partner in the project. 

Read more about some of the case studies in this project.

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A call for the humanitarian aid- and climate change sectors to work together to support long-term adaptation to climate change.

Written by Jayne Lambrou, Faculty of Landscape and Society, NMBU.

In the latest edition of the IDS Bulletin, the Noragric-led project ‘Courting Catastrophe? Humanitarian Policy and Practice in a Changing Climate‘ presents its findings in a collection of articles that examine links between humanitarian crises, the responses that follow and adaption to climate change.

In this project, various types of humanitarian interventions were examined in case studies spanning several countries in which the institutional and policy contexts of the interventions were also assessed. Here, we look briefly at some of these case studies, and present a taster of the project’s findings in a video featuring interviews with some of the project partners, including project leader Siri Eriksen.

Bangladesh
The population of Bangladesh is largely concentrated around the low-lying coastline; Maxmillan Martin from the University of Sussex explains how this has contributed to the devastating effect of the increasingly frequent and intense cyclones and the resulting sea surges that hit the country. People, cattle, crops and homes are wiped out. Disaster risk reduction measures in this country require better ways of predicting such events, as well as better-planned responses to both save lives and to save livelihoods, says Martin.

Ethiopia
In the Afar Region in eastern Ethiopia, a major challenge has been in the distribution of food aid, with too few distribution centres placed over a large area. Fetien Abey from Mekelle University describes how, with men from this region often migrating to find work, women often miss the opportunity of receiving food aid as they are not able to leave children, elders, livestock, crops and households unattended in order to travel the long distances required. Whilst this has improved in recent years with an increase in the number of distribution centres, there is still a problem in getting the food aid where it is needed, says Abey.

Kenya
Lars Otto Næss from the Institute of Development Studies observes that, whilst the humanitarian sector in Kenya (as in Ethiopia) has come a long way in integrating resilience and long-term perspectives into its work, it continues to face major challenges. He gives three examples:

1. Institutional fragmentation. There is a need to facilitate discussions to integrate the large, fragmented network of actors and institutions, and for government coordination.
2. ‘Projectisation’ of resilience/adaptation work, where targeted projects only look at specific elements without regard to the wider issues. Often only the symptoms of vulnerability are addressed rather than the causes.
3. Financing of humanitarian assistance may lack flexibility; financing recovery from disaster is perhaps less complex than financing preparedness measures.

Referring to an intervention in north west Kenya which provided an improved variety of cassava (more drought-tolerant, faster maturing, more productive and more tolerant to diseases than standard cassava varieties), Noragric’s Andrei Marin states the importance of the consideration of social backgrounds in such interventions. Who owns the land and who decides on the access to land at the sites of the interventions? As this crop requires quite a lot of land to grow sufficiently, these are important considerations, says Marin.

Pakistan
Ingrid Nyborg (Noragric) explains that, in recent years, there has been a lot of activity between humanitarian/development organisations and the government in Pakistan, in an attempt to set up systems that better respond to humanitarian emergencies and also look for longer-term solutions. The findings of this case study reveal that, whilst this activity has been considerable at the national level, there has, until recently, been very little activity at the district levels – yet it is the latter that primarily respond to crises. The national disaster management authority in Pakistan is now heavily engaged in competence-building at the district as well as at the provincial levels, to address social- as well as hazard vulnerability.

Malawi
Ruth Haug (Noragric) recounts how Malawi, a country with a history of food insecurity, was more or less able to feed itself over a 10-year period and even export maize to Kenya and Zimbabwe after the introduction of a ‘preparedness’ measure in the form of a social protection programme. This programme included actions such as providing the largely subsistence agriculture-dependent population with subsidized fertilizer and seed. However, whilst Malawi was able to build resilience during this period, the serious floods and El Niño-induced droughts that followed in 2015/16 were too much and the country was again thrown into famine and humanitarian crisis.

Nepal
Sigrid Nagoda (then based at Noragric) spent 3 years in Humla in northwest Nepal where she studied policy processes, humanitarian interventions and power relations with a focus on food security and climate change adaptation. She reveals that one of the challenges to humanitarian assistance that she identified in this region was how to reach the poorest. Nagoda observed that the ‘community user groups’ provided by humanitarian actors were dominated by men from ‘higher’ castes, which limited the decision-making processes. Project leader, Siri Eriksen (Noragric) recounts how, in this case study, “food aid and accompanying development programmes thus tended to legitimise unequal power relations at the village level and dependence of the food insecure households on the wealthier households”.

Hear about these case studies and more in the video above.

Read the latest issue of the IDS Bulletin. All articles are open access.

Jayne Lambrou is a Senior Advisor in communication and events at the Faculty of Landscape and Society at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

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Written by Hans Nicolai Adam, Postdoctoral Researcher, Noragric

Harbouring one of the largest mangrove forest tracks in the world, the Sunderbans cover a sizeable area in southern Bangladesh and east India. Formed by the confluence of three major rivers, the deltaic region which the Sunderbans are part of, is famed for its tiger habitats and dynamic ecology. Researchers from a Norwegian Research Council-funded and Noragric-led project ‘Uncertainty, Climate Change and Transformation’ visited the area in January this year. They explored how the interplay between fluid deltaic ecology, climate change, natural disasters and socio-economic issues pose enormous challenges to human settlements on the densely inhabited islands of the Indian Sunderbans.

Ghoramara island, one of the project’s research sites, represents an extreme case. An impoverished island close to the Bay of Bengal, it has suffered from governmental neglect and is largely devoid of basic amenities. It has been scarred by Cyclone Aila in 2009 and offers few livelihood opportunities. Its most striking feature is that it is a ‘sinking island’. Lying below sea level and having its coastline gradually chipped away through erosion, its residents are gradually migrating. Their future, as in other inhabited islands of the Sunderbans, is uncertain and contested. Predictions of impeding catastrophe co-exist with narratives of persistence, creativity and survival.

As the world braces for the impacts of climate change and international actors grapple to find political solutions on the mitigation and adaptation front, the case of Ghoramara represents a microcosm of the kind of complex and interacting issues that extremely vulnerable population sections in the global south already face now, and more so in the future: Local and global environmental change, development neglect, poor policy and institutional design. Contrary to the popular imagery of impending disaster, project researchers also acknowledge and try to understand how local people – in many cases successfully – adapt and transform in challenging circumstances.

How do its people deal with uncertainty related to climate change? Models, projections and scenarios form a key part of established climate change science and understanding uncertainty, but tend to underplay its human and social dimensions. Local people experience climate extremes, its uncertainty and consequences on a day-to-day basis in ways that abstract models are not able to capture. This is where the project seeks to contribute and inform research as well as well policy. Project leader Lyla Mehta (Institute of Development Studies, UK / Noragric) puts it as follows:

Uncertainty is usually conceptualized from ‘above’ by experts and scientists in quantifiable ways. But these understandings ignore lived experiences of uncertainty – what we call uncertainty from ‘below.’ There is also the ‘middle’ – the knowledge brokers and interlocutors who seek to communicate between the two. It is in the middle wherein we, as a project, see ourselves placed.

Apart from the Sunderbans, similar questions are examined in different contexts. These include a megalopolis in India, Mumbai and a dryland area in the west of India, Kutch.

At the end of January, a workshop in New Delhi organized by the STEPS centre on ‘Climate change and uncertainty from above and below’ invited key academic figures, policy makers and civil society actors to deliberate issues that revolve around understanding and dealing with uncertainty. These involved the presentation of empirical research findings from India, Africa and beyond, aside from discussing epistemological and conceptual questions. All of these contributed to rich discussions which will be reported in future blogs and included in a planned special journal issue.

More on the project and workshop:
NMBU
IDS
STEPS

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