Considering the very diversity of indigenous people worldwide, an official definition of “indigenous” cannot be adopted by UN body.
But we seem to have derived a common definition – as the ones who have inhabited a country or a geographical region for long at the time when humans of different remote cultures or ethnic origins set their foot on it.
Hence it has been estimated that more than 370 million indigenous people are found across 70 countries worldwide, practicing their unique traditions so discrete from those of dominant societies.
India is also home to the indigenous population of 104 million broadly segregated into 700 tribal groups, based on 2011 census. The Indian indigenous population constitutes the second largest in the world after African tribes.
Their help, manifested in all the elements constituting our country—ranging from the struggle of independence to saving innate ecosystems, serve as a source of inspiration and strength.
Indigenous souls play a strategic role in contesting the evil of climate change and protecting biodiversity that is important for Evolution. Indigenous lands often overrun other areas to emerge as the best preserved areas of the biome.
As per the data from National Institute for Space Research (INPE), 23 percent of Amazonian territory under the care of Indigenous communities has the lowest deforestation rates.
However, ironically, the prevailing situation of these indigenous kinds is largely miserable because they have begun a fight across the world’s important forests against being evicted from their forest lands.
Tribal Vulnerability and the game of Indifference:
As industries crouch in these cheaply available lands treasured with resources, many communities get displaced, they have to even wage a war against the powerful for a fair compensation.
They have been termed ‘vulnerable’ across almost all systems, being the first ones to encounter gender-based violence, climate change impacts, natural resource exploitation, availing government facilities or claiming representation in political sphere.
Further they get deprived of their privilege to earn through forest essentials, without being paid for the ecosystem services they provide us.
Instead, human desires seem to have done harm to their very own, under-privileged from the forestland.
Coal has destroyed these pristine community forests in Meghalaya and other parts of eastern India or the palm oil is dominating the jhum cultivation in Mizoram, altering the traditional land-uses.
Recognizing these rights is critical for understanding their struggle for survival as well as the nation’s attempt to curb and offset the impacts of climate change.
The road to Net-zero and destruction abound:
Currently, there has been a trend being followed by every country or Bloc to limit and even diminish its emissions and contribute to the Climate action.
Therefore, “Net zero emission” by 2030 or 2050 is being urgently demanded by the climate movement triggered by Greta Thunberg.
Even IPCC’s 2018 report has professed the need to reduce GHG emission to zero in order to stabilize global temperatures.
But what is Net-zero exactly? Does it really mean to finish all those emissions adding upto global warming or is it merely negating the GHGs released into the environment through offsets or other measures?
Now, that is interesting. Because we are about to scrounge contradictory data sets for such a global measure.
Net-zero relates to balancing the total emitted greenhouse gases (GHG) with total removals made from the atmosphere (i.e., negative emissions) within a time frame.
It is ostensibly rational but since carbon-capture technologies are still being prospected and developed in nascent stages, most of this ‘offsetting will be done through land-based removal and storage of carbon dioxide.
However, according to Oxfam report, Governments and businesses continue to hope planting trees for reaching the net-zero targets but these measures can drive up the world food prices, especially in developing ones.
And even if we continue, we will require approximately 1.6 billion hectares of land, the area equivalent to five times the size of India and every possible land under food production to offset the entire planet’s emission by 2050.
This can lead to a race for acquiring lands indiscriminately in future, further exploiting the vulnerable and driving inequalities.
Oxfam has warned how this poorly strategized act can end up allow the biggest emitters to continue their dirty businesses as usual while distracting us from demanding greater works on ground i.e., cut down the poisons they form and release into our water, air and soil.
According to a research paper: “Net-zero gives a sense of certainty of the future. But there is a lack of credibility unless the peak year is announced. Without it, stakeholders have no sense of urgency. Therefore, it is imperative to announce peaking year or in combination with a net-zero year to give a sense of credibility.”
Governments anyhow continue to permit these profitable, GDP-enhancing but environmentally demeaning acts, either through dilution of existing acts or creating new loopholes.
A co-author asks: “Where is this land going to come from?”
It becomes a dilemma for entire world if one can sabotage one’s food security over the greater needs of the planet (however impossible it may seem).
This is where a whole gamut of mind-washing ploys poses an imminent danger to the indigenous lands being constantly intimidated and treated as “public goods”.
This even depicts the bleak regard for ecology or local sentiment by the world leaders.
An analysis has revealed how a hundred thousand hectares of disputed land is stuck in compensatory plantations plaintiffs, affecting over 50,000 forest dwellers across six Indian states alone.
More than a million forest dwellers have been stuck in similar land conflicts pertaining to the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act [FRA] 2006, that has been amended now.
India has declared that it will create an additional Carbon sink and installed an additional green energy capacity to reach 450 GW in next few years.
Even these unchecked and desperate measures to set up green energy plants across the country, if remain unseen and unregulated by Government, can further weaken the tribal control over their lands. Anything in excess, tends to become a pain ultimately.
Hence a controlled, inclusive and benevolent approach becomes a necessity and is appreciable. And that is a real threat in the country with substantial corruption, lawlessness and red-tapism running in its veins.
Tribal Isolation: Why NOT so serious?
The story is not just limited to India, even the world reciprocates the same.
Indigenous people in general attitude, have always been treated as second-class citizens or inferior to the ones residing in big building with shining doors and a plain, austere view.
We have been ever ready to pay in terms of their lives, livelihoods and now, lands to keep our ‘economic growth’ narrative intact.
While we talk and scream at the top of our voices for human rights, environmental rights and even sustainability, we barely understand that they are still invisible in SDG implementation processes of the world.
We need to understand that while they continue to face these old challenges, they are the ones to have been hit equally hard by the Pandemic too.
Handling outsider intrusions (now as vector/carrier of the disease), managing their petty economy amidst the travel restrictions or simply the decreased support for surveillance or health infrastructure, they can be said to lie at greater risk.
But endangering their lives is akin to endangering the existence of greater biological systems under their care, where illegal activities including mining may creep in.
For the sake of inter-connected systems, it becomes our imperative to offer extra care to the ones who need it urgently before these founding peoples of our land may fall prey to our desires and become extinct.
For the land to them is sacred, a cherished resource for countless numbers who are dead, alive or the multitudes of those yet to be born.