By Northern Dispatch
CPA Release
Posted by Bulatlat.com
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — “Climate change is a matter of social justice,” said a report of the Ibon International, a non-profit economic research outfit based in the Philippines.
“Two centuries of increasing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions have coincided with colonial and neocolonial subordination of the Southern people and resources for Northern and elite benefit,” Ibon said. The group has blamed the climate change and the larger ecological crisis to the dominant capitalist system characterized by unequal access, control and use of the planet’s common resources, and big corporations’ expropriation and abuse of common planetary resources, often through colonial means, to achieve excessive levels of profit, wealth and consumption.”
Indeed, in the recently concluded International Conference on Indigenous Peoples Rights, Alternatives, and Solutions to Climate Crisis, indigenous peoples’ representatives from 15 countries have agreed that most of the world’s state-sponsored programs are not answering the crisis but making it worse.
“Most state sponsored programs to arrest the climate crisis take off from a capitalist dimension,” said Windel Bolinget, CPA (Cordillera People’s Alliance) chairperson.
Large extractive industries like logging, mining and corporate agriculture and forestry have depleted the natural resources of the world and consequently, caused the increasing amount of GHG emissions and its effects.
Indigenous peoples all over the world have, in different ways and against all odds, asserted their rights over their ancestral lands against corporate plunder. According to the CPA, capitalist corporations have focused on the indigenous peoples’ territories as new sources of profit.
In their conference’s workshop on community-based adaptation and mitigation, participants shared their communities’ experiences in preserving and protecting natural resources.
Indigenous peoples of the Chitaggong Hill Tracts, in Bangladesh, recounted their experiences in their villages Mouza Forest, a source of wild fruits, rattan, firewood, etc. Their representatives said the Mouza Forest is the watershed for their springs, river and irrigation. Its protection and maintenance has been a collective responsibility under the supervision of their village elders and no one can enter without clear permission of the village elders.
Participants from the areas said that it was the same with those from the Muyong of Ifugao or Lapat system of Abra, both from the Philippines, and Tagal of Malaysia, or that of the Australian aborigines.
Participants in the indigenous peoples’ workshop noted that the practice and respect for this village system in protecting their forest and watershed still exists today because of the communities who have united and have been asserting the protection of their environment.
But, in the same breath the participants reported that big corporations supported by the government regard the domains of these indigenous peoples as new frontiers for logging, mining and other extractive industries. Some have even deployed military troops here.
In conclusion, the workshop participants resolved to strengthen the campaign for empowering the communities of indigenous peoples in order to assure the protection of ancestral land, its resources and their traditional knowledge and practices. Posted by By
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — “Climate change is a matter of social justice,” said a report of the Ibon International, a non-profit economic research outfit based in the Philippines.
“Two centuries of increasing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions have coincided with colonial and neocolonial subordination of the Southern people and resources for Northern and elite benefit,” Ibon said. The group has blamed the climate change and the larger ecological crisis to the dominant capitalist system characterized by unequal access, control and use of the planet’s common resources, and big corporations’ expropriation and abuse of common planetary resources, often through colonial means, to achieve excessive levels of profit, wealth and consumption.”
Indeed, in the recently concluded International Conference on Indigenous Peoples Rights, Alternatives, and Solutions to Climate Crisis, indigenous peoples’ representatives from 15 countries have agreed that most of the world’s state-sponsored programs are not answering the crisis but making it worse.
“Most state sponsored programs to arrest the climate crisis take off from a capitalist dimension,” said Windel Bolinget, CPA (Cordillera People’s Alliance) chairperson.
Large extractive industries like logging, mining and corporate agriculture and forestry have depleted the natural resources of the world and consequently, caused the increasing amount of GHG emissions and its effects.
Indigenous peoples all over the world have, in different ways and against all odds, asserted their rights over their ancestral lands against corporate plunder. According to the CPA, capitalist corporations have focused on the indigenous peoples’ territories as new sources of profit.
In their conference’s workshop on community-based adaptation and mitigation, participants shared their communities’ experiences in preserving and protecting natural resources.
Indigenous peoples of the Chitaggong Hill Tracts, in Bangladesh, recounted their experiences in their villages Mouza Forest, a source of wild fruits, rattan, firewood, etc. Their representatives said the Mouza Forest is the watershed for their springs, river and irrigation. Its protection and maintenance has been a collective responsibility under the supervision of their village elders and no one can enter without clear permission of the village elders.
Participants from the areas said that it was the same with those from the Muyong of Ifugao or Lapat system of Abra, both from the Philippines, and Tagal of Malaysia, or that of the Australian aborigines.
Participants in the indigenous peoples’ workshop noted that the practice and respect for this village system in protecting their forest and watershed still exists today because of the communities who have united and have been asserting the protection of their environment.
But, in the same breath the participants reported that big corporations supported by the government regard the domains of these indigenous peoples as new frontiers for logging, mining and other extractive industries. Some have even deployed military troops here.
In conclusion, the workshop participants resolved to strengthen the campaign for empowering the communities of indigenous peoples in order to assure the protection of ancestral land, its resources and their traditional knowledge and practices. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)
