Paper short abstract:

‘Campaigning for Environmental Justice’ examines how indigenous communities from around the world – all UNDP 2015 Equator Prizewinners – are taking on global vested, regional, national and local interests in the fight to secure justice.

Paper long abstract:

'Campaigning for Environmental Justice - How indigenous peoples and communities from the Congo to Colombia are seizing the initiative, securing their rights and challenging legal systems that have ignored their ancestral claims.' examines how indigenous communities around the world - all winners of the prestigious 2015 UNDP Equator Prize - are taking on global vested, regional, national and local interests in the fight to secure justice.

Crucially, it draws directly on the voices of the people and the experiences of the: Dynamic Group of Indigenous People, Democratic Republic of Congo; Munduruku Ipereg Iyu Movement, Brazil; Komunitas Adat Muara Tae, Indonesia; Wuasikimas, El Modelo del Pueblo Inga En Aponte, Colombia; and the Comite Para La Defensa y Desarollo de La Flora Y Fauna Del Golfo de Fonseca, Honduras.

Using as its starting point one of a series of five films premiered at the Paris Climate Change Conference to an audience of over 1500 the paper will show how the struggles of the 2015 Equator Prize winners demonstrate that the relationship between the right to secure lands which for centuries indigenous people have safeguarded is bound up with their very survival; and how any effective strategy to protect the planet from climate change needs to recognise indigenous and local knowledge. For, these stewards of some of the world's most precious ecosystems have often been ignored, as Patrick Saidi, from DRC explains "The tropical forests are protected by indigenous groups, so their rights and culture need to be respected".