Monday May 4, 2009, 4:52 pm
HERE IS THE ARTICLE:

By Stephen Leahy*

Photo is Western Shoshone leader Carrie Dann.

Credit:Courtesy of Carrie Dann

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 28 (Tierramérica**) - While industrialised countries like Canada continue to emit ever-higher levels of greenhouse-effect gases, indigenous peoples around the world are working to survive and adapt to an increasingly dangerous climate.

Over millennia, indigenous peoples have developed a large arsenal of practices that are of potential benefit today for coping with climate change, including some holistic and refreshingly practical ideas.

"Why not give automobiles and planes a day of rest? And then later on, two days of rest. That would cut down on pollution," suggested Carrie Dann, an elder from the Western Shoshone Nation, whose ancestral lands extend across the western United States.

Dann, winner of the 1993 Right Livelihood Award - known as the Alternative Nobel Prize - for her efforts to protect ancestral lands, made her proposal before the 400 delegates gathered in Anchorage, Alaska, Apr. 20-24 for the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change.

Dann warned that Mother Nature is getting warmer and the "fever" needed to be cured. "We see many range (grassland) fires in my territory, it is getting so hot," she said.

To prevent similar uncontrolled wildfires that have burned up large portions of Australia and killed hundreds of people in recent years, the Aborigines of Western Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, are using traditional fire practices to reduce such wildfires.

Preventing these fires also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and, for the first time in the world, these Aborigines have sold 17 million dollars' worth of carbon credits to industry, generating significant new income for the local community, according to a report presented in Anchorage.

Australia's Aborigines have traditionally used controlled burning following the rainy season to create barriers to stop the intense wildfires later during the dry season.

Wildfires account for a substantial portion of Australia's carbon emissions and have been very destructive. However, in recent years few Aborigines live on the land any more so there have been fewer controlled burns. But now there is a new role to play in the fight against global warming.

According to Sam Johnston, of the Tokyo-based United Nations University, a summit co-sponsor, it is in the world's best interest to take into account indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge.

In Asia, indigenous people are developing diverse crop varieties and utilising different cropping patterns, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Filipina leader and chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told the delegates.

They are also involved in sustainable agro-forestry and energy production based on small-scale biomass and micro-dam projects.

On the Indonesian island of Bali, indigenous peoples are doing reef rehabilitation work and protecting mangroves. In the Philippines, they are mapping ancestral waters and developing an integrated management plan.

"Many are doing these things on their own, with no support," said Tauli-Corpuz.

In Honduras, faced with increasing hurricane strikes and drastic weather changes, the Quezungal people have developed a farming method that involves planting crops under trees so the roots anchor the soil and reduce the loss of harvests during natural disasters.

Indigenous peoples in Guyana have adopted a nomadic lifestyle, moving to more forested zones during the dry season, and are now planting manioc, their main staple, in alluvial plains where it was previously too moist to grow crops.

Farmers in Belize are returning to traditional agricultural practices and moving up to higher ground, other delegates reported.

In Africa, the Baka Pygmies of southeast Cameroon and the Bambendzele of Congo have developed new fishing and hunting methods to adapt to a decrease in precipitation and an increase in forest fires.

Although indigenous peoples have great capacity to adapt, many treaties and international laws guarantee their rights to food and traditional livelihoods, but climate change threatens all of this, according to Andrea Carmen, a member of the Yaqui Indian Nation, of the U.S. southwest.

When the chiefs of the tribes in the western Canadian province of Alberta declared that there should be no more oil production from tar sands, they were ignored, said Carmen who is also executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council.

Alberta's tar sands oil projects are the major reason why Canada's latest greenhouse gas inventory increased four percent from 2006 to 2007. That increase puts the country 33.8 percent over its commitments established in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, in force since 2005.

But indigenous peoples are also wary of recent actions by governments and industries undertaken in response to climate change, such as building wind farms and biofuel plants, because these are often located on or directly affect their lands and livelihoods, says Gunn-Britt Retter, of Finland's Saami Council.

"We have the knowledge of how to live through these climate changes. We need to use traditional knowledge to help all our cultures live through these changes," Retter said.

"Our message to the world is that we need full and effective participation at the national and international levels in order for our cultures to survive these changes," he added.

It has been 17 years since the first U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings were held to solve the climate crisis, said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the former head of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

"We must act quickly... This is the last chance to take control," she told the delegates by videoconference from her home in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. "The world needs the wisdom of our cultures."

** Not for publication in Italy.

(*Correspondent Stephen Leahy's travel to Alaska was financed by the United Nations University and Project Word, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation for media diversity.

Monday May 4, 2009, 5:01 pm
The utilization of wisdom and ideas that make sense are not popular in my part of the world. :( Can I go live with Carrie Dann?

Monday May 4, 2009, 5:21 pm

Such simple truths . . . And I cannot believe that our "complex" minds do not comprehend them. Our "complex" minded leaders are deluded by greed and power, and though they recognize the truth, their lust for power leads them toward the evil path.

So sad, but the truths passed down for many generations are true and have not changed.

Monday May 4, 2009, 7:32 pm
Awesome story Kat, very interesting, and very wise! thanks

Monday May 4, 2009, 9:22 pm
Noted, thanks to Kat and Carrie. "Why not give automobiles and planes a day of rest? and then later, on two days of rest. That would cut down on pollution". I could'nt agree more. It's very selfish of people who drive everywhere they go when they don't have to.

Monday May 4, 2009, 11:26 pm
Noted with appreciation

Tuesday May 5, 2009, 12:36 am
Noted ..Thanks Kat

Tuesday May 5, 2009, 2:12 am
It still suprises me how much strenght Indigenous people have and their wisdom to look & think ahead,hope a lot of people will learn from it.(without trying to copy it)

Tuesday May 5, 2009, 5:04 am
Noted ..Thanks Kat

Tuesday May 5, 2009, 9:25 am
The only problem with the story is that there is no "climate crisis". There is only the hype which indigenous and
and other people have fallen far. It is a classic example of the "Big Lie" technique....say something totally outrageous often enough, with "authority" to back it up, and most of us will believe it.

People are waking up and the latest Zogby poll shows only 30% of the American public still think that man can control climate by how much CO2 is produced.

The Sun has gone quiet and if we are very lucky it is not the beginning of a "Little Ice Age".

It’s the Sun, Stupid!
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Willie_Soon-Its_the_Sun_Stupid.pdf

"The hallmark of good science is the testing of a plausible hypothesis that is then either supported or rejected by the evidence. The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.
It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of “preventing catastrophic climate change.”

Tuesday May 5, 2009, 1:57 pm
It does not matter whether we agree with Global Warming or not, I personally do not and believe it is just the volcanoes natural shift. However, cleaning up our planet is not a bad thing. I like to breathe clean air and in Los Angeles that is a joke. We have many wildfires here. Some as far as 80 miles away cinders have landed in my backyard.

Tuesday May 5, 2009, 3:02 pm
Why do we always take the hard road? It must be money or greed because doing things the natural way is the only thing that works!

Wednesday May 6, 2009, 6:02 am
There is only the hype indigenous and others have fallen for. We have no industry in Maine. The state is filled with asthma from the winds blowing from the midwest. I'm indigenous and I don't liked to be talked down too. You show no respect for the person that put the story on.

Wednesday May 6, 2009, 1:45 pm
There are those that are wise, they are the ones who follow God's plan, they manage their flocks well, and attend to the herds, they know that riches are not forever either, greed does not bring in the hay, they know that the lambs wool will provide their clothing, the goats a price for a field, and enough goats milk for food, and for the food of their household.. they are the ones that respect God's bountiful harvest, and in doing so reap a bountiful reward.. They are the people who repsect and take care of their environment.

Thursday May 7, 2009, 10:15 am
Thanks, Kat !