Carbon Markets and Indigenous Innovation
Transcript
- I think number one, and that should be the most important principle, is that first and foremost the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to their territories is what matters the most. If any carbon program, be it at the government level or the project level, infringes upon the rights of Indigenous People to their traditional practices, to their quotas, that is the wrong start.
Carbon markets cannot be a license to pollute and we don’t endorse that whatsoever.
The fact is that none of the existing standards really have Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities at the center.
They were designed and they are operated by metrics that are metrics of the Western world.
These are not the ways in which indigenous peoples really go about keeping their forests standing.
So by bringing this ancient knowledge, this traditional science of Indigenous Peoples combined with Western science, we’re working to have a standard that is robust in terms of climate methodology, carbon methodology as well, that is designed from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples, how they can keep their forests standing.
Indigenous wisdom has preserved forests in their territories, yet carbon markets predominantly follow Western standards.
How to amplify ancient wisdom?
It is only through re encountering with Mother Earth, her keepers and their ancestral knowledge that humanity can hope to save itself. The spiritual connections of indigenous peoples and local communities have the wisdom to shift our future.
