Climate Change as a Threat to Indigenous Rights

Indigenous communities internationally have suffered under the hands of colonialist and imperialist powers for millennia. In establishing the UNDRIP, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights set precedent to the protection of indigenous groups internationally. Article 8(2) of UNDRIP states:

States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for:

1. Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;

2. Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;

Any form of forced population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;

1. Any form of forced assimilation or integration.[1]

Further, Article 29(1) of UNDRIP states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to the conservation and protection of the environment and the productive capacity of their lands or territories and resources. States shall establish and implement assistance programmes for indigenous peoples for such conservation and protection, without discrimination.[2]

Climate change not only threatens the cultural values of indigenous groups by forcing climigration, but it also dispossesses them of the very few resources they are contracted to by law: their lands and waters. There are various issues that arise when determining what legal protection is present for communities that suffer disasters due to climate change. In the case of indigenous populations, it is not only domestic and international human rights litigation that they are entitled to, but the protection under UNDRIP.[3] Though protection from climate change is not ensured for the rest of the world, states would have a negative obligation to ensure that climate change is mitigated for the sake of indigenous rights under the convention. However, as the UNDRIP is not legally binding unless states ratify and implement the provisions into law, these protections remain charted illustratively. Nonetheless, UNDRIP outlines that indigenous groups are protected under ICESCR – leaving states liable to establishing and implementing climate action.

[1] United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted 13 September 2007) UNGA A/RES/61/295 (UNDRIP) art 8(2). [2] ibid art 29(1). [3] United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted 13 September 2007) UNGA A/RES/61/295 (UNDRIP).