Training Indigenous Women to Influence the Climate Struggle

Training Indigenous Women to Influence the Climate Struggle

Written on 20 November 2024. Posted in News

BY ROCÍO YON, HORTENCIA HIDALGO & FRANCISCA CARRIL FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

Institutional responses to the climate crisis, guided by negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have perpetuated gender, ethnic and territorial inequalities. This situation can clearly be seen in the barriers facing Indigenous women's effective participation in decision-making. Given this failure, Indigenous movements and, Indigenous women in particular, are organizing to develop their own strategies for confronting the crisis, resisting extractivism and demanding environmental justice. These initiatives include training spaces in which to strengthen their struggles.

The climate crisis has had unequal environmental impacts on the population in a Latin American context. Institutional responses have tended to reproduce inequalities in terms of gender, ethnicity and territoriality. Indigenous and Afro-descendant women are among some of the worst affected. Despite being gradually considered in institutional spaces for participation at the global and national levels, their impact on spaces of power and decision-making is still low. The main barriers they face are a lack of information and a lack of validation of their knowledge. Such barriers coexist alongside scenarios of violence and inequalities of varying kinds.

Our region's experience nevertheless also offers responses that have arisen outside the frame of action of the States. The history of peoples and communities confronting environmental transformations is a long one and, since the 1990s, political organization has become especially relevant with the intensification of extractivism in the region. A number of translocalized organizations have stood up for environmental justice by demanding self-determination, a struggle that has today also taken on the name of climate justice.

In this scenario, Indigenous women of different territorial origins have been the protagonists in promoting grassroots organizations. Through their collective organization and deep knowledge of their environments, they have managed to preserve ways of life that are interdependent with nature and threatened by the climate crisis. In addition, their contributions and careers transcend their territories: they are notable professionals in the environmental, legal and social sciences, and occupy roles as academics, public officials and community leaders. This plurality of experiences has allowed them to coordinate politically and to weave collaborative networks with other actors.

Indigenous women are the driving force behind climate struggles in their communities. IV Training and Advocacy School with Indigenous Women on Climate Change, Tiltil, 2024. Photo: Francisca Carril

Capacity building for advocacy

One of Indigenous women's main strategies for advocacy has been training. Long-standing organizations such as the Organization of Indigenous and Amazonian Women of Peru (ONAMIAP) the Indigenous Women's Network on Biodiversity and the National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Women in Chile have established initiatives by which to strengthen their leadership and actions, and build their capacities.

Through their own experiences in different local, national and global decision-making spaces, Indigenous women are exchanging knowledge and tools and publicizing the barriers they face. Based on the collective history of their peoples, they have thus improved their participation at the territorial, community and public policy levels, and have succeeded in establishing discussions in legislative debates, Indigenous consultations, international meetings and in the communities themselves.

Capacity building from their own worldview generates a recognition of their knowledge as valid, both in its heterogeneity and in its dynamism. This process allows for a collective and dialogical construction based on an exchange between different epistemes, with emphasis on those they consider their own (such as traditional and Indigenous knowledge). This dialogue is possible because of the collaboration between actors, and it enables the forging of networks between Indigenous women and communities, institutions, multilateral agencies, research centres and different organizations.

This collaboration has nurtured their advocacy strategies and allowed them to position their thematic priorities and ways of working in order to address climate justice. At the same time, it provides them with tools that make it possible to reduce the gender gaps in their dialogue with institutions (as well as in the territories), and which strengthen actions at the community level.

A climate change training and advocacy school with Indigenous women

In Chile, responses to the climate crisis have followed the broad outlines of international negotiations. However, the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in climate governance, as recommended by the COP, still encounters a number of barriers: a detailed analysis of national climate change policy reveals only marginal participation on the part of Indigenous Peoples. Firstly, they are presented as a homogeneous group and the gender dimension is therefore ignored. Secondly, the participatory State bodies relevant to them have been hurriedly improvised, without providing their members with the necessary skills for effective participation.

The scenario is consequently an alarming one given that climate policies in Chile are reproducing Indigenous women's situation of exclusion. As if this were not enough, they ignore the role that, through their local knowledge, these women could play in managing climate change. Failing to take concrete measures for their inclusion runs the risk of increasing their climate vulnerability.

The School for Training and Advocacy with Indigenous Women on Climate Change seeks to respond to this context of unequal participation. It is an initiative created collaboratively by the National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Women and the Inter-thematic Working Group on Climate Change, Public Policies and Indigenous Peoples of the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR). Its origin dates back to 2021 in the context of advocacy work on the draft Framework Law on Climate Change in Chile, a law that completed its legislative process without Indigenous consultation or differentiated participation for Indigenous Peoples.

The objective of the School is for Indigenous women to influence climate governance from an understanding that this is not the exclusive task of State institutions. It is also to promote the construction of and dialogue on situated knowledge, emphasizing the experiences of Indigenous women, the effects of the climate crisis on their territories and the lessons learned from this. Ultimately, the School hopes to contribute to the political coordination and networking of different actors committed to climate and social justice.

In international spaces, the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples presents difficulties and the gender dimension is not considered. II Training and Advocacy School with Indigenous Women on Climate Change, Santiago, 2023. Photos: Francisca Carril

Overcoming gaps from their own experiences

In its four virtual and in-person versions, this training space has connected almost 100 individuals, organizations and institutions. Among the topics addressed have been climate and ecological justice, impacts on bodies and territories, intercultural dialogue of knowledge, institutional climate governance at national and global levels, and territorial leadership actions as concrete contributions to climate change adaptation.

The School's outcomes have been key to building a more realistic concept of climate justice. Through workshops featuring critical and participatory methodologies, the historical circumstances of the climate crisis have been reconstructed, giving name to the systems of patriarchal, colonialist and global capitalist oppression that gave rise to it. From this situated perspective, it has been possible to look at and analyse the present, and to put forward shared notions of justice (how to live with the world) and of the future.

The training has had a significant impact on the formation of translocalized and multidisciplinary networks. The Schools have connected people from different territorialities and socio-cultural realities. Through listening and dialogue, Indigenous women share and learn from other experiences. Space has thus been given to a diverse range of knowledge from a logic of horizontality, providing meaning and the possibility of action with which to face the crisis as a complex problem, challenging the vulnerable position in which climate policy has pigeonholed Indigenous women.

In addition, the knowledge shared and constructed at the School provides women with tools to participate in dialogues from which they are often excluded. Understanding climate policy and environmental institutions at different levels has been one of the most interesting and challenging topics. The women are seeking to reduce the information gap and overcome the high technical complexity of the subject. In addition, the women leaders aspire to receive training in all areas necessary to be able to dialogue effectively with the State and thus position their demands.

The Training and Advocacy School with Indigenous Women on Climate Change has connected around 100 people, organisations and institutions. Santiago de Chile, second edition. Photo: Francisca Carril

Training as a political strategy

The training spaces promoted by Indigenous women are providing concrete possibilities through which to build knowledge and put it into practise collaboratively. They are also contributing to positioning their working methods and methodologies, and to taking on different roles in training. This learning also enables Indigenous women to locate their own boundaries and timeframe given that these do not always coincide with the institutional framework or with external agents.

The contributions of women in these spaces are concrete: they have generated situated diagnoses of vulnerability based on an analysis of the life paths of both themselves and their communities. In addition, they have identified actions that contribute to addressing the crisis, together with the knowledge necessary for this work. Furthermore, from a strategic viewpoint, Indigenous women have analysed their possibilities for advocacy at the institutional level and with different actors, increasing their collaborative networks in this area.

Capacity building in these terms promotes personal experiences from a community perspective, deeply connected to the territories and expressed collectively. Through the meeting and exchange of these experiences, specific tools and strategies are generated with which to create influence in the territories, giving value to the feelings and actions of Indigenous women from their bodies-territories. At the same time, capacity building collaborates with institutional relations and promotes multilevel public policy advocacy, generating new alliances and collaborations with the different actors involved in environmental and climate issues.

Rocío Yon is a doctoral researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin and a member of the permanent team of the School for Training and Advocacy with Indigenous Women on Climate Crisis.

Hortencia Hidalgo is a member of the Focal Point of the Indigenous Women's Network on Biodiversity and a workshop leader of the School for Training and Advocacy with Indigenous Women on Climate Crisis.

Francisca Carril is a researcher at the Centre for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies (CIIR) and is a member of the permanent team of the School for Training and Advocacy with Indigenous Women on Climate Crisis.

Cover photo: 2^nd School for Training and Advocacy with Indigenous Women on Climate Change, Metropolitan Region, 2023. Photo: Rosario Carmona

Tags: Indigenous Debates

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