Climate Week NYC

ICA’s 2024 Delegation

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Why We’re Investing Time & Energy into New York Climate Week

Indigenous peoples have been advancing some of the strongest climate policies rooted in our rights, language, culture and identities - deepening a collective appreciation for natural law and the importance of living natural systems as critical to survival on this planet. It’s time we examine how this can be applied to divestment and investment movements. 

International policy-making spaces (like UNFCCC & New York Climate Week) have historically treated Indigenous peoples as stakeholders with no more rights than environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) despite decades of legal challenges and UN declarations that support otherwise. In contrast, the oil and gas industry invests millions to seed doubt about real solutions and champion their corporate interests despite being the leading perpetrators of climate change. 

Over the last three decades, Indigenous peoples have been advancing some of the strongest climate policies rooted in our rights, language, culture and identities - deepening a collective appreciation for natural law and the importance of living natural systems as critical to survival on this planet. Over the last six years, there has been progress to include Indigenous peoples and our knowledges into international climate policies, but this process is still lagging while false solutions like carbon offsets and short-term technical fixes like nuclear power and carbon capture and storage -' continue to be pushed with detrimental impacts to our communities and our lives. 

There are not enough Indigenous-led climate justice organizations North of the Medicine Line, and at ICA we have a responsibility to stay involved, informed and active in international spaces where global colonial leaders are negotiating plans and actions that directly impact Indigenous lives, our rights and our culture—confronting colonial false solutions, & advocating for strong rights based divestment strategies to the climate crisis. Bottom line, no decisions about us without us.