UNDRIP Report - English FINAL - International Forum on Globalization

mention newer laws that aren’t hard laws, like
<strong>UNDRIP</strong>, but we can deal with just simply saying
that we are not pre-empting the indigenous rights
that existed within the Convention on Biological
Diversity,” Fitzgerald noted. On enforcing those
laws, any new agreements or funding should either
require that the body show it is enforcing those
things already or fund the enforcement of it as we go
along, but in such a way that no damage is done by
lack of enforcement. Enforcement, Fitzgerald argued,
should always be available to the citizens. “It is the
only reason why major environmental laws work at
all. We sue the government very often, and that is the
only reason why we have made those things work,”
he said. According to Fitzgerald, the Aarhus
Convention created an extremely important
precedent whereby citizens can enforce the rights
under it not only within their own country, but also
in other countries that are party to it. He stressed
strongly that we should utilize this precedent.
Fitzgerald said that regarding the science, two
degrees is no longer what the target needs to be.
“That was several years ago,” he stressed. When the
Society for Conservation Biology asked Jim Hansen
about what the targets need to be, he said that we are
losing our ice so fast, our rainfall so fast, we have to
work as fast as possible to get down from the current
379 parts per million carbon to 350. Even if we get to
1.5 degrees, we are standing to lose thirty percent of
all species on Earth.
Marcos Orellana had a question for any and all of
the panelists. We have heard that some of the
proposals are designed to give the funds to the
forests, he said. “But this is a metaphor, of course,
because the forests aren’t going to receive any
funds.” Instead, the funds go to institutions or to
people, and the question that Orellana raised is:
“Where are these funds going to go?” Is it to the
government? Is it to the indigenous peoples
themselves? How, and by whom, would this decision
be made? Orellana also pointed put that Tom Kruse
had mentioned earlier that corruption is going to
take place, that it is inevitable. Orellana wanted to
know if any of the proposals have addressed a way
to avoid this.
Tom Kruse of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
responded to Marcos Orellana by saying that we are
living right now in the moment after a massive
dismantling and weakening of states and
governments has taken place the world over. The
whole issue of what constitutes the realm of the
market, what defines its relationship to the state, is
now on the table. “Markets without states don’t
work,” he said, “[However], I think it has also
manifest that we cannot renounce the political
problem today.” Kruse also stressed that we have to
be highly suspect of markets as solutions to
problems.
In response to the question of where the
empowerment comes from, Kruse said that he does
not think it is a simple binary opposition of the
government versus markets. He concluded that in
terms of looking for where to find empowerment, he
would not turn to the markets first, but rather look to
people and see what mechanisms they are utilizing in
order to empower themselves.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz used her comment to reiterate
that the situation of indigenous peoples is really very
dire. “Even though we have adopted the Declaration,
we know very well that violations of our basic rights
contained in the Declaration [are committed] every
day by governments, by corporations, and even by
some conservation organizations.” Tauli-Corpuz said
that because of this, indigenous peoples approach the
whole issue of REDD in a very practical way. They
think there is an opportunity to stress that <strong>UNDRIP</strong>
should be the centerpiece. That should be their
number one point, she said.
Her second point was that “we cannot do away with
governments. Whether we like it or not, they are the
ones negotiating these agreements, not us," she said.
She also urged that we have to differentiate between
governments. Not all governments are alike, she said.
There are indeed governments that are sensitive to
the rights of indigenous peoples. Tauli-Corpuz
warned against making sweeping statements
declaring that all governments are bad, so
governments should not be given the right to protect
forests. “That is utterly illogical,” she said, “because
there are governments at the national level, at the
local level, whom we are working with.
“There are indigenous governments and there are
traditional authorities of indigenous peoples that are
going to be capable of playing a role in these
[negotiations].” This, she said, is particularly why
Tebtebba would like the indigenous peoples who are
affected by these programs to be the ones speaking
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