by Cassandra Smithies (Global Justice Ecology Project)
Alarmed that buffalo, jaguars, orangutans and even whales are being converted into offsets to greenwash oil and mining companies, Indigenous Peoples and civil society request that parties at COP17 immediately stop taking steps to monetize their sacred animals and nature as “natural capital” for carbon and biodiversity markets because it will contribute to their extinction.
The Executive Director of Cultural Survival, Aimee Robeson (Chahta/Chikashsha) explains “if we truly care about biodiversity, we should not be tempted to mone-tize our relatives nor ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, because they have inherent value that cannot be reduced to a dollar amount. These market-based schemes are false solutions that exacerbate the polycrises we are facing. Not only are these schemes sacrilegious, but they also lead to net loss of biodiversity, to ecocide and to degradation of the very systems that support life on Mother Earth, including all of us. There can be no sacrifice zones, no trade-offs and no offsets if we want life on Mother Earth to survive for generations to come.”
“For Indigenous Peoples, nature is not an asset class, she is our Mother,” says Tom Goldtooth (Diné/Dakota), Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network. “Using Indigenous Peoples’ territories and sacred animal relatives for biodiversity and carbon credits violates the Sacred. We reject buffalo credits. Buffalo, which the White Man’s slaughter reduced from 60-70 million in 1853 to a few thousand in the 1880s, are now being hailed as ‘carbon storing machines,’ and turned into soil carbon credits, so polluters can continue to pollute. Our buffalo, Tanka Oyate, are part of our genesis, not ‘bison bonds.’ Carbon trading is an offensive scam that threatens the future of humanity. Bring back the buffalo, not colonialism!”
For Wilmer Lucitante of UDAPT and the A’i Kofán Nation of the Ecuadorian Amazon whose territory was devastated by Texaco/Chevron, “turning our sacred jaguars into carbon credits is a false solution to climate change that accelerates their extinction. Instead of monetizing wildlife, we need to stop oil drilling and mining in the Amazon.”
Similarly, Andine Fahira Lubis of WALHI denounced that the 800 critically endangered Tapanuli Orangutan, the rarest great ape species, are being used for offsets by Jardine Matheson’s Martabe Gold Mine in Sumatra in the Batang Toru ecosystem in Indigenous Peoples’ territories. “Not only is the hypocrisy of orangutan offsets staggering, offsets cannot redeem the irreplaceable.”
Putting a price on nature will not save nature, it will destroy her. Indigenous Peoples’ animals, lands and oceans are not sponges for greenhouse gases, to be grabbed and pillaged by Big Oil and the extractive industries responsible for the climate emergency, which accelerates the 6th extinction. The United Nations must not be complicit with green colonialism.