Indigenous Peoples Facing Climate Change Policies: The Struggle for Autonomy of « Forest Dependent » Communities

While globalization of both extractive capitalism and indigenous rights policies has deepened during the XXI century, contention over access and control of “environmental” and “natural” resources in indigenous territories is escalating around the world. Since the national becomes a more complex site for the global, the specific and deep histories of a country become more, rather than less, significant and hence produce distinctive negotiations with the new endogenous and external global forces (Sassen 2006). In this context, how do indigenous peoples struggles for their communities deploy at different levels of governance? Which shared meanings can we find in the diverse political spaces where their movements intervene? In this presentation we would like to tackle these questions analyzing the Amazonian indigenous peoples participation in the global climate change policy debate.

On the climate change regime, one of the most ambitious international policy scheme is being negotiated under the acronym of REDD+ (reducing emissions of deforestation and forest degradation) (Corbera 2012, Berstein and Cashore 2010). In this framework indigenous peoples and “local” communities are presented as forest dependent people attaching issues regarding their rights and livelihoods to the conservation of forests. How do indigenous peoples movements see this process vis-à-vis their will for autonomy and demands of respect for their worldviews? This presentation is based on fieldwork with indigenous peoples organizations of the Amazon Basin both in the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change negotiations (UNFCCC) and at national and territorial level in Bolivia and Peru.