Indigenous communities were excluded from drafting Canada’s latest climate plans, report finds — here’s what social impact organizations can learn

Indigenous communities across Canada are already facing the brunt of climate catastrophe, but a detailed report from an Indigenous-led climate justice organization argues the Canadian government’s two major climate plans were not developed in ways that respect Indigenous rights. 

“To effectively address climate change, policies and solutions need to take aim at the ongoing drivers and root causes of the crisis and should centre the voices, needs and leadership of the people most impacted by the crisis,” reads the recently published report by Indigeous Climate Action (ICA), an Indigenous-led climate justice organization in Canada. 

Their report looks at the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change (PCF), signed in 2016 and A Healthy Environment, A Healthy Economy (HEHE) from 2020, two federal climate plans developed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governments. PCF includes the federal carbon tax, policies to promote green technology, and planning around technological innovation — all aimed at a 30 percent reduction in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The HEHE builds on the PCF with 64 new measures, including policies intended to strengthen Canada’s clean industries and nature-based climate solutions. 

By and large, the ICA report pans the PCF and HEHE as ignorant of the realities of Indigenous communities today and accuses them of promoting climate solutions that may lead to terrible consequences. But it also offers lessons for Canada’s social impact sector. Environmental NGOs across Canada may be keenly promoting renewable energy projects that actually violate Indigenous rights. Or they might be educating the public on climate change while leaving out the terrible ecological consequences born by Indigenous communities. These NGO may be working with Indigenous leaders while not adequately including their input.

The federal government’s climate plans offer a template for how social impact organizations can avoid similar mistakes around climate justice — and work with Indigenous communities in ethical and empowering ways. 

Indigenous communities are not “stakeholders”

There is a tendency for policymakers to refer to every impacted local community, industry CEO, politician, and Indigenous leader as a ‘stakeholder’, including in the final drafts of both the PCF and the HEHE. But the ICA report argues this term is insufficient. The treaty rights and traditional responsibilities of Indigenous communities to their land makes them far more akin to provincial governments than civil society or industry. “In the process of developing the PCF, Indigenous Peoples were treated more like interest groups and stakeholders, rather than as sovereign entities,” the report’s authors wrote. 

The distinction is important. As sovereign entities, the report says, Indigenous communities deserved a seat at working group sessions for the PCF or HEHE. In the case of the PCF, the report’s authors say Indigenous representatives did not get seats in any of the four working groups tasked with drafting the climate plan. Each working group was made up of officials from the federal, provincial, and territorial governments and led by the Prime Minister and premiers, but were then tasked “to work with Indigenous peoples; to consult with the public, businesses, and civil society; and to present options to act on climate change and enable clean growth,” the report says, citing documents on the PCF drafting process. They did not find any evidence that Indigeous Peoples were consulted for the HEHE.

Ironically, the final drafts of the PCF and the HEHE repeatedly mention Indigenous rights, traditional knowledge, and climate leadership despite not including Indigenous representatives on the working groups that drafted them in the first place. There is a clear lesson for social impact organizations hoping to work with Indigenous communities on climate action: lip service is not enough. “While these reports repeatedly state intentions to work in real partnership going forward,” the ICA report reads, “this ‘real partnership’ has yet to materialize from words into action.” 

Don’t just call a national association — talk to local Indigenous leaders 

Organizations like the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), and the Metis National Council (MNC) represent hundreds of different communities, cultures, regions, languages, and interests from the Far North to southern Ontario. While they offer a unified voice, the ICA report’s authors believe the negotiation processes for both the PCF and HEHE leaned too heavily on input from these National Indigenous Organizations (NIOs).

“For climate policy to be created in ways that respect Indigenous communities and Nations’ rights to free, prior and informed consent, there needs to be engagement beyond the NIOs,” the ICA report’s authors write. Officials did listen to AFN and ITK representatives for the PCF, but the ICA argues this consultation wasn’t enough. “It is unreasonable to expect that, for example, AFN can represent hundreds of culturally and linguistically distinct Nations spanning the breadth of a continent on an issue where impacts, experience, and knowledge are intimately tied to their unique territories,” the ICA report’s authors write.

This is not to say that speaking with the AFN or other NIOs is a bad idea for social impact organizations interested in working with Indigenous communities on climate action. It simply means that specific knowledge and recommendations on climate policy are going to vary significantly. The ICA argues those ideas can’t just be centralized through an NIO — they must be sought by direct consultation with Indigenous communities. 

Climate-friendly projects can still be colonial 

Hydroelectric dams are seen by the PCF and HEHE as suitable alternatives to fossil fuels, along with wind, solar, and nuclear energy. The ICA report calls for a more critical analysis — one that social impact organizations working on climate action should also consider. Its authors found clean energy sources are driving human rights abuses and the violations of Indigenous rights — including violent repression — around the world. “Climate solutions must not replicate the kind of unjust relations and oppressions that the fossil fuel industry is notorious for,” the authors write.

Understanding the causes of the climate crisis itself is also critical. The ICA’s authors believe the PCF and the HEHE are ineffective and unjust because they simply don’t get at the unequal power relations between Indigenous communities and settlers. While Indigenous communities are certainly acknowledged by the PCF and HEHE, the ICA report finds these plans don’t address how the focus on green energy projects and economic growth may actually be the problem, not the solution. “The fundamental flaw with this approach is that it fails to address or even acknowledge the very real ways that economic growth drives climate change, economic inequality, the violation of Indigenous rights, and the dispossession of Indigenous lands,” they wrote. 

Social impact organizations partnering with Indigenous communities or leaders may find this perspective valuable. In this worldview, simply offering an Indigenous community the chance to partner on a solar farm or climate action framework without addressing bigger issues around capitalism is inadequate. “What we see in the inclusions of Indigenous Peoples in the PCF and the HEHE is that Indigenous peoples are referred to as climate leaders and invited to participate in taking action on climate but only within the limits of an economic system created by others and imposed upon us and which was built at the expense of our lives, lands and cultures,” the ICA report says. 

A new Indigenous-led climate vision

The ICA’s authors call on climate organizers, researchers, and policymakers to recognize “…that the exclusion of Indigenous climate leadership and denial of our rights to self-determination actually forecloses on some of the most powerful forces for transformative, systemic change in Canada.” Along with improving the inclusion of Indigenous peoples within decision-making tables, the ICA also wants organizers to begin designing intersectional climate solutions that not only reduce emissions, but also undo systemic oppressions. 

And they aren’t done. Over the course of spring and summer 2021, ICA and researcher Rebecca Sinclair are gathering Indigenous-led climate policy plans from Indigenous Peoples across the country. The report also asks non-Indigenous organizations who want to support this research phase to fund ICA. “Addressing the climate crisis will require the transformation and undoing of colonial relations and structures in Canada,” reads one of the report’s recommendations. “This will require a deep and broad relinquishment of power from settler colonial structures and systems to ensure meaningful co-creation of climate policy that is rooted in Indigenous self-determination.” 

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