Land is Life’s Latin America Program Assistant, Majo Andrade Cerda, attended the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh over the past two weeks. Along with coordinating our side event on the rights of Indigenous Peoples Living in Voluntary Isolation, Majo attended many discussions alongside Indigenous leaders of movements around the world. Here, she shares her reflections on Indigenous participation at the climate discussions.
My name is Majo Andrade Cerda, and I am an Indigenous woman from the Kichwa community of Serena, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I was one of the many Indigenous participants who had the opportunity to attend COP27 this month. As a young leader of my community, who belongs to the first Indigenous guard led by women in the Napo province of Ecuador, I feel it’s important to share my reflections on the conference’s achievements and failures.
Although there were many meaningful side events and discussions in the Indigenous pavilion, negotiations were still held by government representatives, backed by industries, with Indigenous peoples pushed aside. I believe that the United Nations has to adjust their structures so that we, the Indigenous peoples, can share our experiences within our territories directly with those representatives who are making the decisions, and then take collective action. Although we had our own pavilion with multiple side events, space was very limited. It wasn’t a space where we could really be involved in the decision-making process. We can only send reports and hold informal consultations and dialogues. We need to keep working with state representatives to gain mutual understanding of what we need to do as a global society.
As a response to being left out, we as young Indigenous peoples are increasingly more involved in fighting for our rights. Movements led by Indigenous youth are growing, as we are constantly finding ways to open more spaces to have our voices heard. However, as the next generation of Indigenous leaders, we don’t have the capacity to bring people from all around the world to hear us; we have to seek out international platforms. In those platforms, however, we are experiencing more barriers, such as language. Our brothers and sisters, delegates from Brazil’s youth for example, are not able to participate fully, due to lack of translation, as Portuguese is not an official UN language. But it’s not just about speeches on the stage — it’s about supporting Indigenous communities and respecting our ways of life. We have to be made visible to the world to say: “We are here, we exist, and we are protecting the environment for everyone, not just for us.” We have the solutions. If you respect our rights, you’re respecting the rights of nature.
Failures of COP27
One key failure of COP27 discussions, in my opinion, was that government leaders did not consider the devastating impacts of mining that are hidden behind the rhetoric of a sustainable future. My river, the Napo River, is going to be contaminated by mining because the Ecuadorian government is working towards an energy transition in order to fulfill its climate targets. This will affect all peoples along its path, through the Amazon, into Brazil, because we are all interconnected with one flow of the river, flowing all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. When we talk about climate justice, we need to highlight social justice and Indigenous peoples’ rights.
Another failure was that carbon markets were not considered a severe threat. Conservation organizations are seeking funds for climate adaptation, and now for loss and damage, but they don’t consider the origin of these funds. COP27 didn’t manage to have a strategy for that. Carbon markets are false solutions. They keep seeing the Amazon and other tropical forests as commodities. People are buying themselves a good conscience, without having to change their extractive and polluting ways of life. COP27 failed to stop the use of fossil fuels and the consequences will heavily impact Indigenous communities.
Lessons learned
There are many takeaways from my time at the Sharm el-Sheikh climate discussions. Among them was the understanding that networking among Indigenous peoples is one of the keys to strengthening the movements. We are united now, more than ever before, with Indigenous peoples from the Fiji islands and Malaysia, and we are going to strengthen our bonds with our sisters from Brazil. There’s a lot of struggle in our communities — but we know we are not alone. If something happens to us, I know there are a lot of people who would react.
I am more aware than ever before of the important role of women and youth in the movement, both on the front lines as well as the daily life in Indigenous communities. It’s time we realize that women have an important role inside the programs and projects we are developing to support Indigenous communities, because sometimes our voices as Indigenous women and youth are silenced and not taken into account. We have to work daily toward supporting each other. As young Indigenous women, we particularly know how to do this, because we work daily in our communities.
The future of Indigenous participation
After COP27, I am committed to advocating for a paradigm shift, where the environment and the communities cannot be considered separately. Proposals and projects need to come from the communities themselves, and be led by Indigenous peoples, women, and the youth. We are told that funds need to be sent to intermediary organizations as we, as Indigenous peoples, are not capable of managing them. This needs to change. Our parents and grandparents have been working hard for our education, even though it has made us face discrimination and almost lose our languages. But here we are now, as young women, capable of leading and administering our own projects, benefiting not only our communities but also the whole world.
I’ve come to realize that most people in cities don’t know how important Indigenous peoples are. I recall talking with many people in Sharm el-Sheikh who came to COP and asked for pictures of us as Indigenous peoples, just as they did the year before. And I keep responding, “You can take a picture of us, but listen first to what we have to say.” I’m tired of solely being an object of photos in a situation where we are not welcome into these spaces of power. What we genuinely need is being invited to the negotiations – not only at the UN but also on local, regional, and national levels.
In aspects of our rights, if people don’t know who we are and what we are, they are not going to understand our fight.
