5 lessons from the 3rd Facilitative Working Group meeting that you should know.
My friends, you probably have noticed the absence. Sorry for that. Today I wanted to talk to you about climate change.
I know, I know “climate change, not again”.
But this one is unique. In the Paris Agreement the United Nations established a platform to make sure the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples becomes relevant in climate action, and that the necessary information from the local level gets to the decision makers.
Its called the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform.
This platform has activities, and those activities are organized by the Facilitative Working Group. The FWG is composed by 7 representatives of States and 7 representatives of Indigenous Peoples. Here comes the punchline: Its a partnership, all 14 members are chosen by their own constituencies and are equal to each other. Hasn’t happened before.
You can imagine that it was a lengthy and challenging process of negotiations to get to this. A process I’ve had the privilege to be the indigenous representative until it was adopted in 2018 at the Katowice climate summit — or COP24.
Anyway. Fast-forward to today. We’re at coming up to the third meeting, and the honeymoon phase is — or should be — over. These are our 5 key takeaways:
- In-person meetings are better for Indigenous Peoples than digital ones
To address climate change in partnership with States so that the entire world population can survive and thrive is obviously the north star of Indigenous Peoples participating in the work of the FWG. Its activities are geared to facilitate the exchange of knowledge on climate resiliency, adaptation and mitigation.
These activities have become very difficult to facilitate since the COVID-19 outbreak. FWG3 having resorted to a digital platform with daily three hour session incapacitated Indigenous Peoples to carry out the diplomacies which embodies indigeneity, spirituality, and solidarity. Most representatives, including ‘regulars’ to the climate talks do not have the financial and technological luxury of tuning into a three-hour video live stream.
This proves that in-person interaction is a critical precondition for indigenous-led climate action, exchange of views, ideas and knowledge. Despite COVID-19 the UNFCCC chooses to continue the timeline as originally planned, leaving little to no time for important activities that connect the local with the global.
2. The activities help Parties to understand Indigenous Peoples but they are silent
When Indigenous Peoples engaged in the negotiations they pursued a partnership on equal level with States, as no exchange or co-creation of new knowledge should occur with one being the superior and the other being the inferior. Hence, the equal numbers in representatives from both the State and indigenous side.
The FWG is an institution where Indigenous Peoples and States can exchange views, ideas and knowledge, with a two-year work plan that the States signed off on. After one year of interaction, people expected the States to participate actively. However, throughout the four-day meeting, the States’ level of engagement — aside from the State FWG members — has been marginal. Most active “other” participants were representatives from Indigenous Peoples Organizations, and UN agencies.
States still have the opportunity to carry their weight in this partnership, but their silence fuels the fear amongst many that despite the good faith and political investments of Indigenous Peoples in the process, the States may only be poised to break their silence in the final-third-and-review year.
3. Deciding what’s a good or best practice requires more than a checklist
Kenneth Deer (Mohawk, Kahnawake) often shares that he investigates UN resolutions knowing that the devil is always in the details. In the climate regime the term “best practices” makes a regular appearance in decision texts. Whether an Indigenous practice would qualify as a best practice would heavily depend on who gets to decide how best is defined, and with what kind of knowledge. Introducing the metaphorical devil.
To identify best practices would require indigenous control over their knowledge, the information they choose to provide, and participation in any standard setting discourse. In this and other issues that have been discussed during FWG3 it is crucial to understand that this all is intimately linked to the big picture: The right to self-determination as referenced inter alia in the UN Charter, articles 1 of the ICESCR and ICCPR, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
4. Linking the local with global is what the FWG should do
To connect the local with the global, Indigenous Peoples made the conscious choice to negotiate for a FWG which has regional representatives as members, each of whom should continuously seek guidance from the indigenous global caucus and regional caucus and to amplify their voices, on various issues including Article 6 of the Paris Rulebook. This is different from independent experts who speak in their own individual capacity, like the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
As the platform had to become a space under the UNFCCC where indigenous knowledge holders at the local level could directly inform the highest governing body of the Convention. and implement a comprehensive human rights approach into all climate change measures and to recognize and value indigenous knowledge systems, technologies, innovations and practices, customary institutions and Indigenous governance, lands and resources, with enforceable safeguards in all climate agreements, as reflected in theme 1, paragraph 7 of the Alta Outcome Document.
Input and submissions from indigenous knowledge holders towards this end is obviously key. Those indigenous grassroots representatives that were able to log in, quickly realized that FWG3 was too complex and a fast-paced process to participate in. Causing UN agencies and other international organizations to dominate the discourse, which in turn plays a critical role in informing the work of the UNFCCC Secretariat..
5. A constituency that is uniquely indigenous
During the negotiations leading up to COP24 it has been touted that once local communities emerge and decide to participate with the platform that they could become part of the Indigenous Peoples constituency, or that they could go through a fast-lane process, it has also been suggested that they would share the 7 seats with Indigenous Peoples in the FWG. None of these ideas have been proposed by Indigenous Peoples, btw.
The right to self-determination, self-identification and the aim for equal status has been reaffirmed by Indigenous Peoples as rights holders through the 4 guiding principles in 1.CP/23 and by recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the decision that operationalised the platform. Local Communities on the other hand do not have these rights safeguards and there are tendencies for various actors in the UN system to confuse this distinction.
Many wonder how Indigenous Peoples will ensure that this distinction remains in place both in principle and practice. It seemed fair to many that local communities should go through the process as any other constituency under the UNFCCC. The discussion will obviously continue until when the Local Communities do emerge as a constituency.
That’s it. These are our 5 takeaways for you so you don’t have to sit through 12 hours of dialogues and recordings.
Please share this article with someone who should read it.
Are you interested in more context?
After every session Hindou, Estebancio and myself went live to analyze the day, below you can watch or listen to the playlist:
