Rethinking Climate Justice: Examining How Injustice Is Reproduced in Climate Action in Indigenous Peoples Territories

This paper argues that climate justice encompasses more than just the inequitable distribution of the biophysical impacts of climate change—a widely accepted perspective. While Indigenous peoples disproportionately suffer the consequences of climate change despite their minimal contribution to the crisis, our analysis reveals that climate action implemented in their territories often perpetuates injustice.

The article shows that the mechanisms reproducing these inequalities are deeply embedded in the practices through which climate action is applied in Indigenous territories, regardless of the progress and formal recognition Indigenous peoples have gained in global and national climate justice narratives and institutions. Drawing on Anibal Quijano’s conceptual framework of the coloniality of power, which refers to the enduring legacy of colonial domination manifesting through structures, knowledge systems, and power relations, we identify and discuss three key mechanisms that sustain these inequalities: legalism, which imposes external normative frameworks that delegitimize Indigenous rights and knowledge systems; tutelage, which subordinates Indigenous decision-making to external actors, perpetuating historical dependencies; and blueprints, which implement generic solutions that disregard local cultural and territorial specificities. These mechanisms persist in the everyday practices of state officials, NGO professionals, and even Indigenous actors, often without formal acknowledgment of their colonial nature.

These injustices are examined in the context of climate conservation, focusing on three critical areas for Indigenous negotiations: territorial security, effective participation, and compensation for ecological services, such as REDD+. Data from the Rapa Nui in Chile, as well as the Quechua in the Andes and the Kichwa in the Amazon in Peru, convincingly demonstrate how climate action can reproduce injustice when it is embedded in the coloniality of power. The analysis also reveals that the impacts vary according to the specific organizational structures, scales of action, and ecological contributions of Indigenous territories, highlighting the need for more context-sensitive approaches.