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This timely volume explores the ways in which indigenous peoples across the world are challenged by climate change impacts, and discusses the legal resources available to confront those challenges.
Indigenous peoples occupy a unique niche within the climate justice movement, as many indigenous communities live subsistence lifestyles that are severely disrupted by the effects of climate change. Additionally, in many parts of the world, domestic law is applied differently to indigenous peoples than it is to their non-indigenous peers, further complicating the quest for legal remedies. The contributors to this book bring a range of expert legal perspectives to this complex discussion, offering both a comprehensive explanation of climate change-related problems faced by indigenous communities and a breakdown of various real world attempts to devise workable legal solutions. Regions covered include North and South America (Brazil, Canada, the US and the Arctic), the Pacific Islands (Fiji, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia), Australia and New Zealand, Asia (China and Nepal) and Africa (Kenya).
This comprehensive volume will appeal to professors and students of environmental law, indigenous law and international law, as well as practitioners and policymakers with an interest in indigenous legal issues and environmental justice.
Foreword
Stacy Leeds
PART I: INTRODUCTORY CONTEXT AND PRINCIPLES
1. Commonality Among Unique Indigenous Communities: An Introduction to Climate Change and its Impacts on Indigenous People
Randall S. Abate and Elizabeth Ann Kronk
2. Introduction to International and Domestic Climate Change Regulation
Deepa Badrinarayana
3. Introduction to Indigenous Peoples’ Status and Rights under International Human Rights Law
Lillian Aponte Miranda
4. Introduction to Indigenous Sovereignty Under International and Domestic Law
Eugenia Charles-Newton and Elizabeth Ann Kronk
5. Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: Comparative Models of Sovereignty
Rebecca Tsosie
6. Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Climate Change Adaptation
Maxine Burkett
PART II: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
7. International Organizations REDD+: Its Potential to Melt the Glacial Resistance to Recognize Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights at the World Bank
Leonardo A. Crippa
South America
8. REDD+ and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
Andrew Long
9. REDD+: Climate Justice or a New Face of Manifest Destiny? Lessons Drawn from the Indigenous Struggle to Resist Colonization of Ojibwe Forests in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Philomena Kebec
10. Lower 48 States of the United States of America Natural Resource Development and Indigenous Peoples
Sarah Krakoff and Jon-Daniel Lavallee
11. Climate Change and Tribal Water Rights: Removing Barriers to Adaptation Strategies
Judith V. Royster
Arctic
12. Canadian Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change: The Potential for Arctic Land Claims Agreements to Address Changing Environmental Conditions
Sophie Thériault
13. America’s Arctic: Climate Change Impacts on Indigenous Peoples and Subsistence
Peter Van Tuyn
14. The Saami Facing the Impacts of Global Climate Change
Irina L. Stoyanova
15. Complexities of Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on Indigenous Peoples through International Law Petitions: A Case Study of the Inuit Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Hari M. Osofsky
16. Pacific Island Nations Climate Change, Legal Governance, and the Pacific Islands: An Overview
Erika J. Techera
17. Fiji: Climate Change, Tradition and Vanua
Victoria Sutton
18. Islands in the Stream: Addressing Climate Change from a Small Island Developing State Perspective
Clement Yow Mulalap
19. The Rising Tide of International Climate Litigation: An Illustrative Hypothetical of Tuvalu v. Australia
Keely Boom
Asia
20. The Impacts of Climate Change on Indigenous Populations in China and Legal Remedies
Wenxuan Yu, Jingjing Liu and Po Dong
21. Changing Climate and Changing Rights: Exploring Legal and Policy Frameworks for Indigenous Mountain Communities in Nepal to Face the Challenges of Climate Change
J. Mijin Cha
Australia and New Zealand
22. Climate Change Impacts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities in Australia
Megan Davis
23. Negotiating Climate Change: Maori, the Crown, and New Zealand’s Emission Trading Scheme
Naomi Johnstone
Africa
24. Climate Change, Law, and Indigenous Peoples in Kenya: Ogiek and Maasai Narratives
Patricia Mbote and Elvin Nyukuri
Randall S. Abate, Associate Professor of Law and Project Director, Environment, Development and Justice Program, Florida A&M University College of Law, US and Elizabeth Ann Kronk, Associate Professor of Law and Director, Tribal Law and Government Center, University of Kansas School of Law, US
‘Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples offers the most comprehensive resource for advancing our understanding of one of the least coherently developed of climate change policy realms – legal protection of vulnerable indigenous populations. The first part of the book provides a tremendously useful background on the cultural, policy, and legal context of indigenous peoples, with special emphasis on developing general principles for climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions. The remainder of the volume then carefully and thoroughly works through how those general principles play out for different regional indigenous populations around the globe. All of the contributions to the volume are by leading experts who bring their insights and innovative thinking to bear on a truly complex subject. Whether as a novice’s starting point or expert’s desktop reference, I cannot think of a more useful resource for anyone interested in climate policy for indigenous peoples.’
– J.B. Ruhl, Vanderbilt University Law School, US
‘In Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples, editors Randy Abate and Elizabeth Kronk have assembled a truly comprehensive and informative look at the special issues that indigenous peoples face as a result of climate impacts and an overview of the law – international and domestic, climate change and human rights, substantive and procedural – that applies to those issues. One of the great strengths of the book is that no group of indigenous people is made to stand proxy for all the others; instead, after exploring the general issues facing all indigenous peoples and the general legal strategies they use, the book focuses most of its attention on the specific climate change issues that confront particular groups – South American indigenous peoples; the various tribes of Native Americans in the US; the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, collectively as well as in respect to particular Arctic countries; Pacific Islanders; indigenous peoples in Asia; the various groups of Aborigines and Torres Islanders in Australia; the Maori on New Zealand; and several tribes in Kenya, Africa. For people interested in climate change and climate change adaptation, this book provides a unique overview of the special vulnerabilities and plights of indigenous peoples, issues that must be considered as the world works to formulate effective and protective climate change adaptation policies. For people interested in indigenous peoples and international human rights, this book paints a grim picture of the various ways in which climate change threatens this very diverse group of cultural entities and the deep knowledge of place that they usually possess, while at the same time offering hope that the law can find ways to keep them from disappearing – and, indeed, that indigenous peoples might just help the rest of us to survive, as well.’
– Robin Kundis Craig, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, US
‘It is one of the world’s cruelest ironies that some of the earliest effects of climate change are being felt by indigenous populations around the world, even though they contributed no more than trivial amounts of the greenhouse gases that are at the root of much of the problem, and they are so politically and economically powerless that they played no role in the decisions that have led to their plight. At the same time, many of these populations are victimized by certain actions designed to reduce emissions, such as land clearing for biofuels cultivation, and restrictions on forest use. Professors Abate and Kronk have assembled a formidable collection of experts from around the world who demonstrate the diversity of challenges facing these indigenous peoples, and the opportunities and challenges in using various international and domestic legal tools to seek redress. This book will be an invaluable resource for all those examining the legal remedies that may be available, either now or as the law develops in the years to come.’
– Michael B. Gerrard, Columbia Law School, US
