Paper short abstract:

With local knowledge of wind cycles, Ikoods and Binizáa challenge the transregional global climate governance in legal deeds and sovereign Assemblies, while Indigenous territories are in focus to generate over thirty thousand MW with wind energy, disregarding cultural and territorial rights.

Paper long abstract:

Local knowledge on cycles of wind blowing forces, became ancestral ritual practices of the Ikoods and the Binizáa. The South bound dry wind Tehuano crosses the continent from the Gulf of Mexico down to the Pacific, sweeping through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the North bound wind coming up from the Pacific brings up moisture.

Transregional climate change governance institutions have pointed out the great wind potential of the southern Isthmus to produce over thirty thousand megawatts, and official planners are expecting a steady growth of two thousand MW yearly, to reach a wind harvest goal of 12000 MW by 2025.

In view of such a huge potential, companies investing in the region have been greedily disregarding people's territorial and cultural rights. Twenty two wind farms were installed already without free, prior and informed consent. Due a lack of inclusive regional planning and institutional disrespect to indigenous sovereignty and right to participate in the decision making processes and benefits, a large number of social, legal and environmental issues have arouse chaotically and stopped some projects.

This paper intends to analyse the background and forthcoming of conflict in Ikoods and Binizáa territories that surround the lacunar system, and explore how their biocultural and environmental knowledge comes up front in legal deeds and how old forms of social organization reborn to challenge the technocentrical development planners.