This International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice stands in firm solidarity with Indigenous communities worldwide. We honor and support their resolute struggle for land and resources as they #FightForOurFuture towards our collective goal of just, equitable, healthy and sustainable food systems.
We recognize that Indigenous Peoples are the guardians of over 50% of our planet’s lands, despite only 10% being officially recognized as theirs. Their traditional knowledge and sustainable agricultural practices are crucial for preserving biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and ensuring global food security. Yet, despite token recognition by the United Nations and its Member States, the widespread exploitation and plunder of ancestral lands led by transnational corporations, governments, international financial institutions, and other imperialist forces in collaboration with local elites continue unabated.
We stand in unwavering solidarity with Indigenous communities worldwide, who bravely defend their lands, resources, livelihoods, and ways of life against profit-driven encroachment, exploitation, and destruction. We support the Adi people and the Adivasi in their resistance to mega-dams in India; the Sakai in their fight against palm oil plantations in Indonesia; the Sengwer in their struggle against commercial forest conservation in Kenya; the Kuy people in their opposition to economic land concessions in Cambodia; the Ogoni in their battle against oil conglomerates in Nigeria; the Cordillera and Lumad people in their resistance to mining and other destructive projects in the Philippines; the diverse Indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest in their fight against harmful agribusiness in Brazil; and many other courageous struggles of Indigenous peoples to defend their rights, preserve their communities, and protect our planet.
Land and resource grabbing that deprive Indigenous Peoples of their rights and dignity are often disguised as initiatives to ‘transform’ food systems in response to global crises of hunger, climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. These schemes–cloaked in the rhetoric of ‘conservation,’ ‘green transition,’ or ‘feeding the world’–are fundamentally designed to extract profits from land and labor. In reality, they undermine food sovereignty and violate Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination. These include:
- Land appropriation through ‘special economic zones’ and ‘growth corridors’ in the context of expanding bilateral trade and investment agreements
- ‘Carbon removal’ or carbon offsetting initiatives, for which governments have allocated 1.2 billion hectares of land globally
- Top-down investment-led conservation schemes
- Biofuels and ‘green’ energy production
- Mining boom driven by rising demand for critical ‘transition’ minerals
- Integration of smallholders into corporate value chains and techno-centric, chemical input- intensive agriculture, facilitated by digitalization
- New financial instruments that ‘assetize’ land
Such projects and schemes prioritize corporate interests over community needs, leading to displacement, environmental degradation and the erosion of traditional knowledge systems. Indigenous land management practices have sustainably preserved ecosystems for millennia. By disregarding Indigenous rights and wisdom, and wrestling away their control over ancestral lands, these initiatives not only fail to address the root causes of global crises but often exacerbate them.
Furthermore, these projects are frequently accompanied by human rights violations (HRVs). In 2023, PAN Asia Pacific’s Land and Rights Watch recorded at least 94 land-related HRVs against Indigenous Peoples, including killings, arrests and other forms of harassment. In one case, a Tembé indigenous woman from Brazil was shot in the neck while filming the attacks perpetrated by guards of palm oil producer Brazil Biofuels against her community. Meanwhile, in Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom REDD+ project managed by the government and a big conservation NGO, around 16,000 indigenous villagers are facing displacement, arrests, and harassment–their crops destroyed, their huts and fields burned down.
We condemn the escalating dispossession and violence against Indigenous Peoples, while billions of dollars are being channeled to supposedly address global crises and accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Even the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has acknowledged that “Despite the wide recognition that Indigenous Peoples are indispensable partners for reaching the targets of the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the corresponding funding strategies do not necessarily reflect their crucial role,” pointing out that of the USD 1.7 billion pledged in COP26 to advance tenure rights and forest guardianship of Indigenous Peoples, only 7% went directly to their communities and organizations. Worse, these funds are often used to facilitate the implementation of market-oriented and profit-motivated climate schemes such as carbon markets that tend to displace or dispose Indigenous communities.
Such figures reveal a systemic failure to genuinely empower Indigenous communities in addressing global environmental challenges and shaping our food systems. We expect more of the same marginalization and tokenism of Indigenous Peoples at the UN’s upcoming Summit of the Future, whose techno-centric and neoliberal agenda is being shaped by big corporations and imperialist forces.
True transformation of our food systems should prioritize local control over resources, agroecological practices, and respect for the interconnectedness of land, culture, community, and people’s food sovereignty. It should support the Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination, including their right to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. For this to be achieved, food systems should first and foremost be liberated from all forms of imperialist exploitation and control.
The future of Indigenous Peoples will not be secured through a Pact for the Future designed by their historical colonizers and oppressors. Instead, it lies in strengthening grassroots movements where Indigenous communities have always played pivotal and heroic roles. Only the people themselves, through their vigilance, unity, and unwavering struggle, can truly safeguard the future of humanity and our planet.
Indigenous Peoples fight for just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable food systems! ###