I’ve witnessed this transformation here in the Zanzibar archipelago, a delicate string of islands in the Indian Ocean where my colleagues have been planting millions of trees over the past decade. This week, I visited dry and rugged coral areas where tree cover is now returning to the land and witnessed how this is repairing the local ecosystem and creating jobs and wealth for the people who live within it. Our team recently expanded this same approach to nearby Mozambique – and it is crucial work increasingly in demand around the world.

Forests and people aren’t thriving together today. Forest loss accelerated in 2020, increasing more than 12% even while overall economic activity declined globally due to COVID-19. According to a recent big-picture analysis by Our World in Data, however, “[a] future with more people and more forest is possible.”

Making the necessary transformations at scale is the idea behind the Canadian government’s 2 Billion Trees program. Unfortunately, the government hasn’t reached much of this goal yet, according to The Globe and Mail. The most recently available numbers suggest that only 8.5 million trees have been planted so far, and 7.6 million of those are spruce and lodgepole pine planted in British Columbia. In the rest of the country, 28% of the total trees can be attributed to the relatively small charity that I work for, Community Forests International, and I can assure you we were not expecting to score so high on the leaderboard. The final totals for 2021 will be available soon, but the overall story of lagging results remains the theme. 

And Canada needs a much more ambitious goal than planting two billion trees over 10 years if we are going to realize the potential our forests offer for climate security. For example, requiring forestry companies to store more carbon than they emit through their harvest operations would be far more significant. In fact, Canada’s managed forests currently emit more carbon than they store, because of overharvesting and the increased impacts of climate change, such as fires.

A new Indigenous seed-collection initiative, just announced as part of the 2 Billion Trees program and to be delivered by the National Tree Seed Centre in New Brunswick, is an exciting step in the right direction. The initiative aims to partner with Indigenous communities to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into seed saving and to gather seeds from species of special cultural and economic value to First Nations. Proceeding with care, especially in respecting and protecting the invaluable Indigenous knowledge shared through this process, is critical to ensuring that justice is upheld in this forest effort and that the same extractive mistakes on the land are not repeated in the realm of knowledge and culture.

Canada needs a much more ambitious goal than planting two billion trees over 10 years if we are going to realize the potential our forests offer for climate security.

People will become a positive force for forests and for the climate when we achieve justice in how forests are cared for. That means empowering rural and Indigenous communities that live and work most closely with forests with the rights to decide how their home ecosystems are respected and managed. Too often those decisions are made by companies with prevailing short-term profit motives and no rooted place in the ecosystems and communities they’re impacting. 

Deforestation in the Amazon reached a record high last month, and new research based on two decades of satellite images published in Nature Climate Change warns that the world’s largest rainforest is now approaching a “tipping point.” Among the worst drivers of not just the deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions but also the displacement of forest-dependent communities are multinational agribusinesses and their foreign financiers. The same satellite record also reveals vibrant areas of the Amazon that have remained healthy and intact, with distinct boundaries matching areas where Indigenous rights have been upheld.

We have to get beyond the idea that people are necessarily the problem. People have always been a part of forests. We are not separate. There’s roughly the same area of “wild” land on Earth today as there was 12,000 years ago. It’s shocking to those of us immersed in colonial narratives of “pristine nature,” but people have always shaped forests in significant ways. The difference today is that the ways in which colonial societies and economies shape land is overwhelmingly devastating.

Today, more than 97% of land on Earth is no longer intact and has lost the required richness and biodiversity to maintain ecological integrity. Our life-support systems are collapsing. Protecting and restoring more forests as biodiverse cultural landscapes – by respecting local and Indigenous land rights and knowledge as a first priority – is not only ethically necessary but one of the most important contributions we can make to stabilizing the climate. Because the history, wisdom and science are clear: Indigenous and other collective communities do a better job of keeping forests and their vital carbon stores intact over the long-term.

I see this here in Zanzibar, where community groups are time and time again the best protectors of coastal mangrove forests. Mangroves grow half on land and half in the ocean and are the most carbon-dense forests in the world. At-risk coastal communities we have the honour of working alongside have been taking it upon themselves to safeguard and restore these special mangrove ecosystems. They’re doing it without any carbon-offset financing or payment for ecosystem services because they understand that mangroves provide their nearby homes with irreplaceable protection against rising sea levels and that the work is simply necessary.

And I see it in my home province of New Brunswick, where the Wolastoqey Nation is striving to assert the right to care for and benefit from millions of acres of traditional lands, much of which was sold illegally for $1.50 an acre to companies that have profited from their destruction. This movement is so important right now – most significantly for justice and reconciliation, but also for the forests of New Brunswick and for the global climate. No tree-planting strategy could match the climate and economic benefit offered by transitioning these lands back under the care of Indigenous communities with ongoing reparations to practise restorative management optimized for carbon drawdown.

The International Day of Forests happens to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and this invites us to reflect on all the ways forests and justice are woven together today and every day – and then to take action.

Daimen Hardie is co-founder of Community Forests International.

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– Arnold Clifton, Chief Councillor, Gitga’at Nation

It’s always hard to accept that you’re heading down the wrong path. Just ask fishery managers along the Atlantic Coast, who saw, within their lifetimes, the seemingly inexhaustible cod drastically reduced in numbers, and the eventual collapse of a fishery that was the foundation of coastal communities and economies. It was a case of taking too much, too often, with too little thought given to future generations.

Here on the West Coast, we’ve experienced our own fisheries collapse, too, as populations of salmon and other culturally and ecologically important species experience drastic reductions. These marine species have supported First Nations of the North and Central Coast and Haida Gwaii for millennia; they are the essential ingredient in maintaining our cultures, long-term food security and sustainable economies.

As with other natural resource declines across North America, the problem with fisheries management over the past century has been not just a matter of unsustainable extraction practices that have taken more from the sea than could ever be replenished. It’s also that decision-making power and control were taken from First Nations – the people with the most to lose if sustainability is overlooked.

The landmark Fisheries Resources Reconciliation Agreement (FRRA) between Coastal First Nations and Canada’s federal government – initially signed in 2019 – aims to turn the corner on those historic wrongs while creating a fisheries management model based on sustainability and true co-governance. The agreement was amended this summer to establish the next planning steps for new community-based commercial fisheries.

Reconciliation is a long and complicated process. When it comes to fisheries along the North Pacific Coast of Canada, reconciliation begins with lessons learned from past injustices and mistakes – decades of overfishing, bad management decisions and authority wrested from the very people whose ancestors have managed these coastal resources for thousands of years. It’s about recognizing injustices and righting wrongs, both past and present, but it’s also about rebuilding trust and starting over. This latter part is the most important but also the most difficult. It’s what sets us out on a new, better path together.

By working together with the federal government on a nation-to-nation basis through the FRRA, the Gitga’at, Gitxaala, Haida, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Metlakatla, Nuxalk and Wuikinuxv Nations will provide opportunities for their communities to not only participate but lead the way in this revitalized economy. The agreement upholds First Nations’ priority access to food fisheries. It also ensures greater access to commercial fisheries and increased say in how fisheries are managed. It will stimulate the coastal economy, create new jobs and restore a livelihood in commercial fishing that has long been a major source of income in our communities. 

It will mean young people can once again look to fishing as a good and stable career.

Reconciliation is a long and complicated process.

For signatory First Nations, this agreement will mean increased involvement in existing commercial fisheries using the market to purchase licences, quotas, vessels and gear. A new type of commercial fishery – called a community-based fishery – will be developed to support local small-boat fleets. And an increase in vessels will ensure more families can access culturally important fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes.

The beauty of the FRRA is that it offers flexibility for each community to choose its own path. Some will start commercial fisheries immediately, while others will choose to rebuild stock in their territories first. And some will work to do both. 

Beyond the economic benefits, fisheries management through the FRRA could become a blueprint for improved resource-management efforts worldwide. The FRRA will be managed through a co-governance process between First Nations and the federal government. Its approach respects First Nations’ autonomy and sovereignty while incorporating both cutting-edge science and ancestral knowledge to establish more effective fisheries management plans. Conservation and restoring stocks, especially salmon, will be foundational. These new fisheries plans will protect and conserve fish for the benefit of all Canadians by using up-to-date stock and catch numbers based on ongoing monitoring work by Coastal Guardian Watchmen and other stewardship staff.

For Coastal First Nations, fisheries reconciliation is one part of a much larger vision. It’s the culmination of extensive work over the past decade safeguarding the marine environment, fighting oil pipelines and ensuring passage of the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which prohibits large oil tankers from traversing our coastal waters and threatening diverse species. 

These landmark achievements in fisheries management and marine protection are complemented by ongoing work to protect and sustainably manage the forest-based resources of our territories. By signing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements in 2016, along with British Columbia, we made a commitment to collaborative land planning using an ecosystem-based management approach, and in the process created the largest Indigenous-led carbon offset project in Canada. 

Taken together, these efforts support our unwavering goal of building a true conversation-based economy in our coastal territories – driven by sustainable fisheries, clean energy and ecotourism, instead of unsustainable activities that have proven so destructive. 

In a world facing two major and worsening crises – climate change and biodiversity loss – we believe this sustainable vision is needed now, more than ever. For our coastal communities, but also for others across the country and beyond. 

Christine Smith-Martin is the executive director of the Coastal First Nations-Great Bear Initiative.

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Limited access to COVID-19 vaccines in certain regions, travel restrictions and quarantine in the United Kingdom for people from “red list” countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia, and rising costs of travel and lodging are hindering Indigenous participation, Indian Country Today has found.

Even those who manage to get to Glasgow, Scotland, for what is shaping up to be one of the world’s most important meetings on addressing climate change may have little access to influence the discussion, despite the UN’s recognition that Indigenous knowledge is key to long-term success.

“Indigenous peoples need to create their own Indigenous Climate Change Convention,” said Graeme Reed, co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. Reed is of Anishinaabe and European descent.

The gathering is set from November 1-12 in Glasgow, and leaders in the United Kingdom have been adamant that the meeting take place in person despite the resurgence of the pandemic.

As COVID-19 infections rise, however, the United Nations and United Kingdom leaders are facing increasing public pressure from Indigenous people, non-governmental organizations and leaders in developing nations to postpone the November conference until people can gather together safely.

A coalition of 1,500 green organizations as well as a coalition of 48 Indigenous and civil society groups sent letters to leaders calling for the conference to be delayed. And more than 600 member organizations of the Women and Gender Constituency to the climate change summit joined the call to postpone the meeting, saying that the event pits climate change action against global health.

Currently, British citizens traveling home from red-list countries must undergo testing and quarantine in a hotel. Non-U.K. residents from red-list countries are denied entry altogether

The U.K. made a special exception initially to allow for vaccinated COP26 delegates from red-list countries to enter the country, but required them to quarantine for five days at a hotel. Recently, after calls escalated for cancelation of the summit, COP26 President Alok Sharma announced that both vaccinated and unvaccinated delegates, observers and media from red-list countries would be allowed to enter, with their quarantine time in hotels paid for by the U.K. government.

Vaccinated participants from red-list countries must quarantine for 5 days; unvaccinated must quarantine for 10 days.

COP26 organizers announced in June that they would be sending vaccines to delegates who might not otherwise have access to them, but Britain didn’t start shipping the vaccines until September 3, officials said.

In response to questions from Indian Country Today, a COP26 spokesperson said organizers are working to keep the gathering safe.

“We are working closely with public health officials, and all partners including the Scottish Government and UN, on every possible measure to ensure we hold COP26, in person, in a COVID-19 secure way,” according to the statement. “This includes vaccinations, a specific test, trace-and-isolate regime, social distancing, enhanced ventilation and face coverings. The U.K. has announced the offer of vaccination to COP26 …accredited delegates who would otherwise be unable to get them and we are on track to administer the first doses.”

It’s almost too late, however, for people to be fully vaccinated and obtain visas for travel in time to attend the conference, said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Goldtooth is of Diné and Dakota ancestry.

“I’m questioning the legitimacy of this conference, since the people who really need to be there might not be able to attend,” he said.

‘Barriers to participation’

Authors of the massive, sobering UN climate change report, the International Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report released on Aug. 9, make several references to Indigenous people and their knowledge of the Earth as essential resources in battling global warming.

And in the preamble of the landmark 2015 UN Paris COP21 agreement binding member countries together to battle climate change, parties acknowledge that action should be guided by knowledge of Indigenous peoples.

But that doesn’t mean officials listen. In the UN organizational scheme, individual member countries are considered sovereign states but Indigenous tribes or communities are not — they must depend on UN accredited organizations for credentials allowing them to attend the conference.

Each accredited organization receives a limited number of credentials for attendees. COP26 organizers had not yet issued credentials to accredited organizations by early September.

“Indigenous peoples’ lives are on the front lines of climate change and I am concerned that so few of us will be able to be at the table in Glasgow during negotiations,” said Andrea Carmen, co-chair of the Facilitative Working Group for the Local Communities and Indigenous People’s Platform. Carmen is a citizen of the Yaqui Nation and executive director of the International Treaty Council.

Indigenous peoples were not allowed inside negotiations among states at the COP conferences until 2015, when they gained recognition under the Paris Agreement with the creation of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform.

I’m questioning the legitimacy of this conference, since the people who really need to be there might not be able to attend.
-Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network

In 2018, platform members elected 14 members to the Facilitative Working Group, half of whom are representatives of Indigenous peoples organizations and half from regional groups. Under the rarified, complex hierarchy of the UN climate change conventions, the group has official recognition and can submit work plans to negotiations. Members of the working group can be present during negotiations but lack official negotiating power.

“We had to do our work by exerting pressure from outside the process,” Carmen said. “If we were lucky, we might have had a couple of Indigenous people who were credentialed by states who would come out and tell us what was really happening.”

Indigenous peoples attained the status only after decades of hard work and negotiations by leaders and advocates, Carmen said.

Reed said the group strengthens the positions Indigenous people bring to the table.

“The working group is an important tool for Indigenous peoples to have institutional credibility within the eyes of the UN Climate Change Convention,” Reed said.

But it’s not the same as negotiating on equal footing with other sovereign nations, critics contend.

“Even in the best of times access to and participation in the (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) spaces is far from equal, whether for negotiators or for civil society observers,” the 48 Indigenous and civil society organizations wrote in a letter to COP26 leaders that was shared with Indian Country Today.

“Global inequalities play out in terms of whose delegation is biggest, best resourced and most able to cover multiple negotiations at the same time,” the letter states. “Marginalized groups, Indigenous peoples and women face particular barriers to participation.”

Indigenous peoples lead the way

Although the world’s Indigenous population continues to experience unequal access to influential forums such as COP26, they have had an outsize role in calling attention to the impacts of climate change.

Globally, Indigenous people comprise only 5% of the population yet manage 80% of the world’s biodiversity such as forests, tundra and mountains. And although they exert the smallest carbon footprint, they are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to research published in the academic journal, Nature Sustainability.

“Indigenous peoples are action makers, innovators, through their traditional knowledge,” wrote Hindou Oumarou, a member of the Facilitative Working Group, in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals blog. Ibrahim is a member of the Mbororo pastoralist people in Chad and president of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad.

“For centuries, Indigenous peoples have protected the environment, which provides them food, medicine and so much more,” she said. “Now it’s time to protect and benefit from their unique traditional knowledge to bring concrete and natural solutions to fight climate change.”

The Indigenous Environmental Network released a report in August 2021 claiming that Indigenous resistance against fossil fuel expansion projects in Canada and the U.S. has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter of the annual emissions in both countries.

Researched and written by Indigenous Environmental Network staff and Oil Change International, the “Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon” report examines 26 Indigenous frontline battles against a variety of fossil fuel projects, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline, Enbridge Line 3 and others.

“Indigenous land defenders have exercised their rights and responsibilities to not only stop fossil fuel projects in their tracks but establish precedents to build successful social justice movements,” the report stated.

Going beyond ‘lip service’

For now, Indigenous leaders and organizations are working to gain as much access as possible to the UN conference even as COP26 policies are changing daily.

COP26 organizers are now considering holding the conference as a hybrid virtual summit, according to Aberto Saldamondo, counsel on climate change for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

A virtual meeting would significantly sideline Indigenous people who may have limited access to reliable internet service, according to Carmen, Goldtooth and other Indigenous leaders.

Moreover, they believe the negotiations should take place in person, since Indigenous participants have limited access to conference sessions with officials and government leaders.

“A lot of the work at the UN is grabbing states (leaders) in the hallways and cafeterias and saying, ‘Hey, we need your support on this position or policy,’” Carmen said. “We need to be able to sit down physically with the states and tell them about our communities. That kind of work can’t be accomplished virtually.”

Indigenous leaders in the U.S. got a boost this year when the nation officially rejoined the UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change, with former Secretary of State John Kerry appointed as the first presidential envoy for climate change.

Carmen said Kerry met informally via a Zoom call with her and a handful of tribal leaders in August seeking input from Indigenous people regarding the U.S. position on climate change.

“I reminded him respectfully that in creating the Facilitative Working Group, COP leaders stated that countries are strongly urged to consult with Indigenous peoples; part of that commitment includes incorporating suggestions and recommendations by Indigenous peoples into U.S. policy,” Carmen said.

“I suggested that the U.S. could take the lead in officially including Indigenous peoples in policy creation,” she said. “He did agree to meet with us informally in Glasgow at the COP26 conference.”

Kerry’s office declined to provide a comment to Indian Country Today.

Andrew Miller, advocacy director for Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin, is among those who are skeptical about the impact of the conference.

“It will be interesting to see if there’s any concrete outcome from the COP26 beyond lip service to Indigenous peoples and rights,” Miller said. “We always debate whether or not to go to the annual COP meetings. From a cost-benefit perspective, it may not be worth it for Indigenous leaders to spend limited funds and to take two weeks away from essential community organizing against loggers, gold-miners, etc.“

Still, Miller said he understands that Indigenous people are reluctant to back away after their hard-won, albeit limited, access. But he wonders if COP26 will contribute to policy changes among massive international non-governmental organizations or other powerful international entities such as the World Bank, corporations and governments.

“This is what we need to watch for,” he said.

Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Ojibwe tribe, is a national correspondent for Indian Country Today.

This story originally appeared in Indian Country Today and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

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An increased public awareness of broken treaties, unmarked graves, racism and ongoing cultural genocide is contributing to a powerful social movement for #LandBack across the country. This means that claims of Indigenous rights and jurisdiction – rather than being dismissed as mere distractions – are rightfully considered material facts that can delay a mine, stop a pipeline and force a government to buy out mining exploration projects.

When students in Osgoode Hall Law School’s Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic recently decided to take a close look at junior miner Noront Resources Ltd.’s corporate disclosures filed with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), they found some gaping holes. The company had disclosed almost nothing about the fierce Indigenous opposition to its projects in Ontario’s Ring of Fire region, a mining district once touted as “Ontario’s oil sands,” located in the roadless boreal peatlands some 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.

The students, working with Greenpeace, MiningWatch and the Council of Canadians and led by the Neskantaga First Nation, conducted research and analysis into Noront’s annual information forms (AIFs) and management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) over the last five years. Noront plans to develop a nickel mine and other deposits in the area.

These projects, however, are located in the homelands of Anishinaabe and Anishini peoples who are parties to the James Bay Treaty No. 9, an agreement in which First Nations promised to keep peaceful relations, and Canada and Ontario pledged to protect their culture, livelihood and jurisdiction on the land as times changed. These First Nations thus hold Aboriginal and treaty rights across their territories and also have obligations under their own Indigenous laws to steward the lands and waters of the region. These include the Neskantaga First Nation, at the headwaters of the Attawapiskat River, and several downstream Mushkegowuk communities.

And yet, in recent AIFs issued by Noront, the nine Matawa First Nation communities in the region of the deposits are barely mentioned, outside of references to partnerships with Marten Falls First Nation, Webequie First Nation and Aroland First Nation. The language used in Noront’s disclosure – language that hasn’t changed over the last five years – fails to acknowledge that there are specific First Nations whose rights will be affected by its projects, and who are currently actively voicing their dissent. Noront’s repeated boilerplate disclosures of the general risks of First Nation lands and rights claims leave investors with the impression that the situation is stable, rather than volatile, and that no First Nations have made any recent and specific claims or assertions relevant to Noront’s projects.

This is simply not the whole truth. 

Neskantaga First Nation has been contesting the planned mining and infrastructure developments in the Ring of Fire over this entire five-year period. The tiny First Nation, known for holding the shameful distinction of Canada’s longest-running boil-water advisory, has made its opposition to Noront’s projects known on a number of occasions and in a variety of ways, including by threatening legal action and issuing public statements. In recent years, other First Nations have also expressed opposition to Noront’s projects and the regulatory processes being employed to approve them. Last winter, Neskantaga First Nation, Attawapiskat First Nation and Fort Albany First Nation went so far as to declare a moratorium on all development in the region. 

An increased public awareness of broken treaties, unmarked graves, racism and ongoing cultural genocide is contributing to a powerful social movement for #LandBack across the country.

Noront’s lack of transparency goes against current trends in information disclosure. Earlier this year, Ontario’s Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce made a number of recommendations for improving the province’s investment environment that acknowledged “increased global momentum towards enhanced disclosure of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors that impact a company’s financial performance.” Indigenous impacts and opposition are increasingly becoming recognized as crucial social and governance factors to be considered in responsible resource development decision-making. Based on this, the Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic sent a letter last month to the Ontario Securities Commission asking for an investigation into Noront’s disclosures. The group’s submission argued that an accurate disclosure of material facts and changes would include details about the extent of Indigenous opposition to a company’s projects.

Figuring out how Indigenous rights impact logging, a pipeline, a dam, a transmission line or a mining project is not always easy. But the most important thing is for companies to actually disclose the fact that First Nations are claiming jurisdiction over lands that the companies have assumed to be “their” moose pasture. Increasingly, even companies whose projects have passed through Crown environmental assessment processes and received government permits are finding that they still must contend with Indigenous governing authority on the land – or risk delay and disruption. And investors are taking notice.

Societal expectations of how risks from Indigenous rights will be disclosed by companies are changing. Statues are falling, universities are being renamed, and there is widespread hope that the thousands of Indigenous children who died at Indian residential schools will now finally be properly memorialized and the perpetrators brought to justice. It’s time for companies and securities regulators to make sure the whole truth of Indigenous rights claims are brought to light through corporate risk disclosures.

Dayna Nadine Scott is an associate professor and co-director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic. David Peerla is an advisor to the Neskantaga First Nation.

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I see the parallels between the safeguarding of the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture in the face of past, present and future environmental degradation. Attempting to awaken the world to this common understanding has guided my work. I have spent the last 15 years speaking to many audiences, offering a human story from the unique vantage point from which I come, my Inuit culture serving as the very anchor of my spirit. Travelling from city to city, province to province, across our large country of Canada, I was busier than I have ever been, as Canadians finally started to understand the Arctic connection – until COVID-19 hit. Now, many months later, I have learned to carry on with these “teaching” moments via Zoom and recorded messages.

When you share the human side of climate change, people relate to it better. The issues become clearer for them, no matter where they come from, when they can see themselves in human stories. In other words, if we can shift climate change out of the language of science, politics and economics and bring it home to the issues of health, food security, culture, families, communities and human rights – not just for Inuit, but for us all – it is more relatable. It helps to mobilize people to take action to address climate change in a tangible way.

After my book The Right to Be Cold came out, I was invited to New Zealand and Australia for book festivals. I was on a panel with Tim Flannery, a well-known Australian climatologist and author. At the end of the panel discussion, an audience member asked Tim a question: “What is lacking in our world, when we now know the science so clearly, that is not allowing us to take urgent action on climate change?” Tim’s answer struck a chord with me: “Imagination.”

Imagine we can do things differently. Imagine we can address climate change differently. Imagine we can innovate sustainable economies differently.

I believe we need to not only imagine a new way of doing things, but we must, as Canadians, re-imagine our unsustainable economic values and realign them with Indigenous values. Inuit and other Indigenous Peoples are not just victims of globalization wreaking havoc on our communities. With our understanding of nature, which we depend on as our food source and as a powerful character-builder for our children, Indigenous Peoples have much to offer in helping to galvanize a largely disconnected urban world. The pandemic has shown us just how interconnected we all are. The knowledge, values and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples hold the answers to the many challenges our world faces today. I strongly believe Indigenous wisdom is the medicine we seek in healing our planet and creating a sustainable world.

Transformation must happen from a very personal place; our attitudes, outdated policies based on colonialism, and unsustainable businesses must be shed and changed to meet a new world order, one that embraces the real meaning of our common humanity.

As author and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson says, “Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.”

Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet.

This article is part of a series of stories from our Winter Issue cover package: What it will take for us to get the climate message before it’s too late.

On Wednesday, December 9, Watt-Cloutier joined Corporate Knights, with Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki for a fireside chat about climate action.

Watch the full event below.

For more information on the event, visit corporateknights.com/paristoglasgow.

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In early May, the Prime Minister unveiled a new “bridge loan” program to support large businesses recovering from a pandemic economy. Among the conditions, companies must demonstrate how they will contribute to federal climate targets for decarbonization. By encouraging carbon offsetting in the plan, Canada has an opportunity to further reconciliation with Coastal First Nations and ensure our economies are not left behind in the recovery plan.

The Great Bear Rainforest Carbon Project – led by nine coastal First Nations – is the world’s largest forest carbon initiative. Vast amounts of carbon are stored by old growth trees in the Great Bear Rainforest on the North and Central Pacific Coast and Haida Gwaii. The forests here represent one quarter of the world’s remaining coastal temperate rainforests. As coastal people, who have lived here for 14,000 years, we know that keeping ocean and forest ecosystems healthy is the key to preserving our way of life.

To create a sustainable economy, coastal First Nations looked beyond the destructive resource extraction model common to our coast 20 years ago. In 2000, the Coastal First Nations began working with BC on land use planning. A landmark 2006 agreement lead to the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest, making 85% of the rainforest off-limits to industrial logging. Then in 2009, when the two Parties signed the Reconciliation Protocol, it allowed for the validation and sales of carbon credits. ​

Corporations looking to take steps to meet their emission reduction targets can invest in protecting that rainforest with Great Bear Carbon Credits. All revenue from offset sales goes directly back into First Nations stewardship of our lands and waters, and supports projects to ensure traditional governance and community well-being.

Building off land use agreements, this carbon sequestration funding model also contributes to the adjacent coastal and marine areas.  The carbon offsets support the innovative funding model of the Marine Planning Partnership for the North Pacific Coast (MaPP), globally recognized as the gold-standard for collaborative marine use planning. MaPP undertakes marine ecosystem-based management with 17 First Nations and British Columbia.

Carbon offset sales support Coastal Guardian Watchmen who are highly-trained and experienced guardians of land, water, wildlife and cultural sites. In Kitasoo/Xais’xais territory on the Central Coast, Guardian Watchmen have led monitoring of world-renowned grizzly bear habitat and eradicated illegal hunting.

With dwindling government resources for science research, the carbon finance model has helped First Nations stewardship offices undertake some of the most advanced –and in some places, the only – species monitoring and wildlife data collection on the BC coast. As well, climate change research and planning by communities is taking place. This is science that benefits all Canadians. In Heiltsuk territory, offset funds provide core funding for advanced scientific research on crab, rock cod and invasive species to inform a sustainable approach to Indigenous fisheries management. Offset revenue also finances stewardship activities to monitor at-risk whales and Pacific salmon species in Haida Gwaii.

Carbon financing also offers a source of long-term funding for communities to explore meaningful opportunities for renewable energy projects on a diesel-dependent coast, sustainable shellfish aquaculture, ecotourism and non-timber forest product ventures.

The Great Bear Rainforest Agreements have put in place a world-leading model of ecosystem-based forestry management: 85% of our coastal temperate rainforest is set aside for protection and is now permanently off-limits to industrial logging.

Towering old-growth trees that reach up to 1,000 years in age can still be found in our territories. Our streams and rivers sustain 20% of the world’s wild salmon. Rainforest, ocean estuaries, fjords and islands support remarkable biological diversity – including iconic species such as grizzlies, Spirit bears and black bears, coastal Pacific wolves, humpback and killer whales and six million migratory birds.

The Great Bear Forest Carbon Project offers Canadian businesses and governments the chance to build back better in the wake of COVID-19 by working with Coastal First Nations to protect the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest right here on our Pacific Coast.  In the effort to regain lost economic momentum during the pandemic, buying Great Bear credits is an opportunity to invest in a conservation economy that balances ecological integrity with human well-being.

As the country works to revitalize the national economy and meet its 2050 climate goals, Canada must ensure First Nations economies are not left behind and build the new normal together. The federal government has the opportunity to support investment in sustainable jobs in our communities and protect climate resiliency by conserving one of the world’s largest carbon storage rainforests for future generations.​

Chief Marilyn Slett is president of the Coastal First Nations.

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This is just one of many examples of Indigenous peoples reclaiming their space in the Canadian economy. Before European contact, Indigenous peoples had a robust trade economy. In 1867, through the Indian Act, Indigenous inherent economic rights were systematically and expressly stripped. Today, through examples like the Tahltan Nation investment, we see that Indigenous peoples are reclaiming their rightful place in the fabric of Canada – especially in business.

As president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB), and in my experience as a board member at the Ontario Power Generation, I have seen how business can be the most expedient route to lifting our communities out of poverty and getting us closer to economic reconciliation. At the same time, we’re seeing a strong push around the world for more renewable energy sources and environmentally sustainable businesses.

A good example is the 300-megawatt wind farm in Ontario that was built as a collaboration between the Henvey Inlet First Nation and international energy company Nigig Power Corporation. The community, in partnership with Pattern Energy, raised more than $900 million in senior debt to be a 50% equity stakeholder. Interestingly, the financing came from 26 lenders from around the world, none of them Canadian.

Sources of energy in this country need to diversify, and as the number of energy projects grows, we have an opportunity for reconciliation through strong inclusion and participation of Indigenous peoples and businesses.

As more renewable projects move ahead, there are four key aspects to meaningful Indigenous participation in infrastructure or energy projects, or “four directions of sustainability,” to keep in mind. They mirror the four quadrants of the Medicine Wheel and they benefit everyone involved, from project inception to development and eventual decommissioning.

1. Community Buy-In

Community buy-in is key for sustainability. It’s not only the right thing to do; it also makes good business sense. Energy projects benefit from accessing the traditional knowledge holders and Elders in our Indigenous communities and their valuable contributions to sustainable development endeavours. Having this knowledge base at the table from inception to development, and in some cases to closure or remediation, of land is powerful.

In addition to listening to the local community and Elders, it’s a great asset to have Indigenous community leaders actively involved in these projects from the beginning.

One of the main aspects of CCAB’s Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) program, a corporate-social-responsibility initiative with a focus on Aboriginal relations, is to ensure Indigenous inclusion from the top down. As a start, OPG has included Indigenous leaders like Mohawk leader and activist Roberta Jamieson and now me as part of its board. Over the years, OPG has developed numerous equitable partnerships with Indigenous communities:

• The 28-megawatt Peter Sutherland Sr. Generating Station project, where Taykwa Tagamou’s subsidiary Coral Rapids Power has a one-third equity interest.

• The $26-billion, 438-megawatt Lower Mattagami River Project, of which the Moose Cree First Nation owns 25% equity.

• As well, the 44-megawatt Nanticoke Solar Project (the former home of Ontario’s Nanticoke coal plant) was developed in partnership with Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation (15%) and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (5%).

Without that community buy-in, energy projects won’t have access to valuable traditional knowledge from Elders nor the support of Indigenous leaders.

Indigenous peoples have unique rights and a special constitutional relationship with the Crown, and depending on the circumstances, the duty to consult is a mandatory part of an evolving legal framework that could affect business.

2. Community Procurement

Aboriginal businesses are growing at nine times the rate of non-Aboriginal businesses and have the capacity to supply 24% of the federal government’s total business contracts, according to CCAB’s recent Industry and Inclusion: An Analysis of Indigenous Potential in Federal Supply Chains report. Federal procurement spending through the Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Business (PSAB) accounts for an average of less than 1% and has been as low as 0.32% of total annual federal procurement spending since 1996. In the recent election, the federal government made a commitment to increase its Aboriginal procurement spending to the 5% target that CCAB has been calling for – in line with the Indigenous population in Canada. Hitting this target would put more than a billion dollars into the Indigenous economy.

The generation of revenue for Aboriginal businesses and communities is a key driver of economic reconciliation, and it’s mutually beneficial.

With community procurement, you’re empowering a whole support system and supply chain around your project – and that’s good business for everyone. Why would a company import a good or service when it can tap into local Indigenous resources, expertise and understanding of cultural nuances; develop a human resource base; and, quite frankly, respect Indigenous rights through business?
3. Business Acumen Development

There is enormous opportunity for Indigenous communities to increase business acumen and create capacity through energy projects. Learning by doing is key in business, and building practical knowledge and management experience provides a pathway to economic reconciliation. Indigenous communities and businesses have largely been locked out of the economy, and only in the last 20 or 30 years have we been rebuilding our business acumen in a modern context. It’s going to take time. We’re going to have our bumps and bruises along the way, but it’s a necessary process.

4. Community Investment

Shared revenue generation on energy projects can occur through either shareholder equity or royalties. Royalty payments to communities is certainly the safe route. It’s not the one that I personally favour, but every business deal is different and needs to be weighed carefully. At the end of the day, equity, when communities share in the ownership of a business, means the communities are more engaged and involved in business ventures.

Government funding is also important. The Government of Alberta, for example, recently created the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation (IOC) to provide loan guarantees through a $1 billion fund to Indigenous groups that want to invest in the energy sector. While this is great progress, there are still too many Indigenous people living in poverty. Many Indigenous leaders hold government accountable to their fiduciary responsibility, but when accessing government funds, communities can’t typically spend outside the box set out, nor is the funded money nearly enough. That funding can also come and go with every change in government. That’s why self-empowerment is crucial to allow communities to generate their own revenue and make decisions on where to spend resources.

By participating in partnerships, we go back to the original intent of the treaty, which recognizes our rights as Indigenous peoples. The idea of treaty is the sharing of resources. When communities are participating as equity owners, we create champions of these projects, which creates certainty and reduces risk to the bottom line.

There is still a long way to go when it comes to investing in Indigenous communities and businesses. Our recent Moving Capital, Shifting Power report finds that institutional investors have a golden opportunity to generate more demand for Indigenous employment, advancement and growth of Aboriginal businesses.
I challenge those developing new infrastructure and energy projects to look broader and deeper into the Indigenous community for leaders, entrepreneurs and knowledge keepers. Indigenous peoples are Canada’s original entrepreneurs. It’s time to think outside the box and discover the potential Aboriginal partnerships can provide.

JP Gladu is the outgoing president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

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On February 21^st in Ottawa, SHARE (a leader in responsible investment services, research and education) and the National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association (NATOA) co-hosted the first ‘Reconciliation and the Indigenous Economy: The Role for Institutional Investors’ forum.

Attended by over 100 participants, the event brought together Indigenous business leaders and institutions from all around the country to discuss a new and emerging opportunity for institutional investors in the growing Indigenous economy.

Building on the premise that Indigenous people have been systematically excluded from the economic table of this country over time, the forum generated thoughtful insights into the role of the investor in economic reconciliation today. It offered the space to connect with Indigenous leaders, businesses, philanthropists and asset managers to facilitate new opportunities for investment in the Indigenous economy.

It also served as a convergence of purpose —  to establish a clear focus on the leadership needed to increase investments in the Indigenous economy.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted by the UN general assembly in 2007 and calls for the Indigenous right to an economy, helped lay the groundwork for examining the role of institutional investors in the emerging Indigenous economy. In line with the Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action #92, which calls for respectful and meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples, the Ottawa forum focused on encouraging an institutional investment environment that develops long-term sustainable opportunities for economic development projects with Indigenous communities.

Building on existing national strategies, such as the work of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Businesses’ Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) and Supply Change programs, the forum highlighted pathways for engagement within the Indigenous economy and ways to overcome barriers around access to capital.

Indigenous business leaders brought a clear voice to the forum. Clint Davis’ work at North 35 Capital helps Indigenous nations achieve growth and value creation by maximizing their inherent competitive advantage. Davis highlighted the strategic advantage of Indigenous economic inclusion and the need for collaboration in overcoming financial barriers and challenges.

Shannin Metawabin, CEO of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association, pointed out the significance of the growth of the Indigenous economy and the need for increased access to capital, particularly through national Canadian government funding. He noted that rectifying the under-capitalization of the Indigenous economy should be a central theme in the economic reconciliation narrative of this country.

A recently released Manitoba First Nation economic impact report pegged the regional Indigenous economy at an estimated $9.3 billion annually. The national Indigenous economy has been estimated at $30 billion. There is enormous opportunity for strategically aligning Indigenous economic development and the investment environment in Canada.  A $100 billion Indigenous economy is possible. The forum made it clear that the time for institutional investing in reconciliation is now.

Carol Anne Hilton is the CEO and founder of the Indigenomics Institute

Also by Carol Anne Hilton from Corporate Knights’  Spring Issue: Indigenomics in Action 

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Growing up Anishinaabe hunting and fishing with his father, a second-generation logger and chief, Gladu had always planned on becoming a conservation officer. His first job out of forestry school involved working with over 40 First Nations communities across Ontario through the federal First Nations Forestry program, and that, says Gladu, “is when I fell in love with my community.”

“It seemed to me there was real opportunity to build economies, build communities, build jobs, build families. It’s just something that’s always been innate for me.”

Gladu spent the next two decades in the natural resource sector, creating businesses for First Nations, negotiating agreements with the wind, mining and forestry sector, and consulting on everything from sawmill development to biofuels and wind power monitoring sites. One executive MBA from Queen’s University later, Gladu was a natural fit to take over the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) as president and CEO six years ago. Building economies, communities and jobs is what this power broker does best – and now he’s mobilizing action on all three fronts at the national level.

CCAB was actually started by Shoppers Drug Mart founder Murray Koffler, along with former prime minister Paul Martin and a number of others over 30 years ago, with the goal of “reintegrating” Indigenous people into the Canadian economy. As Gladu says, “I like to remind Canadians that we were Canada’s first economy – we had an economy even before the newcomers, with trade and commerce.”

Today’s Indigenous economy is estimated to be around $32 billion, with roughly 45,000 Indigenous businesses across virtually every sector. “There’s been extraordinary growth,” says Gladu.

But while Indigenous people make up 5% of Canada’s population, there still hasn’t been much in the way of economic reconciliation. Indigenous businesses only account for 0.3% of Canadian federal procurement contracts, points out Gladu. “That’s $60 to 65 million, which is a pittance.”

His current passion project is CCAB’s new Procurement Champions program, which challenges governments and corporations to do better by connecting with Indigenous businesses from coast, to coast, to coast.

“Our MO these days has been around supply change – the opportunity to supply change [through supply chains].”

Gladu tells Corporate Knights how he and his co-chair and incoming Suncor CEO Mark Little went to the federal government and said, “Listen, Suncor spends 10 times what you do on Indigenous businesses (roughly $700 million last year alone) and look at the economic impact that it’s had.”

They’re encouraging the federal government to commit to a 5% target in five years. That would increase the government spend to about a billion dollars a year on Indigenous businesses. If they get all provincial governments and territories to also target 5% that would contribute over $23 billion to Canada’s Indigenous economies, fuelling hundreds of Certified Aboriginal Businesses from printing, engineering and catering companies to architectural and media firms.

Gladu says one of the biggest challenges he and his colleagues face in government meetings is that a lot of the programs and resources set up to support Indigenous communities have been very reactionary – supplying clean drinking water, decent housing, dealing with sky-high youth suicide rates. “All these really important issues,” notes Gladu. “Then someone like me will come and say, ‘don’t forget about business and supply chain and procurement’ and they say, ‘we don’t have time for that right now, we’ve got these other issues.’”

Switching mindsets and changing the narrative to consider what a “strong economy means for our community” is a struggle sometimes for Gladu. Particularly when, as he points out, too many have a bias – “sometimes unconscious and sometimes conscious” – against Indigenous businesses. “People think that it costs more money to do business with us or we don’t have the capacity when the opposite is in fact real. We did the research.”

Beyond its Aboriginal Procurement Marketplace open to Certified Aboriginal Businesses and Procurement Champions, CCAB also connects Indigenous entrepreneurs to tools, training and financing to scale their businesses, as well as a certification program that confirms corporate performance in Aboriginal relations.

Why is this work so meaningful to Gladu, who also has a 15-year-old daughter?

“Both my grandmothers are residential school survivors. I was very fortunate that both my parents had jobs. The impact that those jobs had on my parents and the impact that had on me pushed me to go beyond high school to college. It’s put me in a place now where I can influence and where I can make a difference for my family, for my community and, quite frankly, for my country as a national Indigenous leader.”

Gladu, who’s also on the board of Ontario Power Generation and was recently appointed chancellor of St. Paul’s University College, Waterloo, adds, “None of this would have been possible without a job or without an education. I want my people to have as many opportunities as they choose and that’s not possible without a strong robust economy.”

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