Extractive and industrial development projects threaten the fundamental rights of Indigenous Peoples, according to a new study co-authored by Colorado State University Assistant Professor Dominique David-Chavez.
The research, carried out in collaboration with nine other universities from around the world, demonstrates ongoing violations of Indigenous rights through the largest quantitative analysis carried out to date at a global level.
The study, led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), quantifies the negative impacts that these development projects have on the lifeways, rights and lands of Indigenous communities.
While Indigenous peoples comprise only 6.2% of the world’s population and steward over a quarter of the world’s land, they are directly affected by at least 34% of all documented environmental conflicts over extractive and industrial development projects.
The report, published in the journal Science Advances, is based on data collected over the past decade by the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), an initiative coordinated by ICTA-UAB that has identified and mapped a total of 3,081 socio-environmental conflicts around the world.
The study covers more than 740 Indigenous nations and communities affected by such activities, representing at least 15% of the approximately 5,000 nations and communities worldwide.
According to the data collected, landscape loss (56% of cases), livelihood loss (52%) and land dispossession (50%) are reported to occur globally most often in conflictive development projects.
Eight out of 10 environmental conflicts refer to only four sectors, with mining being the sector that most frequently impacts Indigenous Peoples (24.7%), ahead of the fossil fuel sector (20.8%), the agriculture, forestry, fishing and livestock sector (17.5%), and the construction and exploitation of hydraulic dams (15.2%).
Conflicts over projects linked to the agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and livestock sector show specifically high rates of reported impacts. Compared to other sectors and the global average, deforestation (74% of cases), land dispossession (74%), livelihood loss (69%), and biodiversity loss (69%) are reported to occur significantly more frequently in this sector.
The Quechua, Mapuche, Gond, Aymara, Nahua, Ijaw, Munda, Kichwa, Guarani and Karen comprise the ten Indigenous communities most frequently burdened with environmental conflicts in the EJAtlas dataset. However, researchers believe that the actual number of affected Indigenous nations and communities are expected to be much higher as “there are still significant data gaps, particularly in Central Asia, Russia and the Pacific, where data coverage is more limited,” said Arnim Scheidel, ICTA-UAB researcher and co-author of the study who highlights the great effort made by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and hundreds of collaborators who have collected relevant information for the EJAtlas since its creation.
“Though our findings reveal clear evidence of the disproportionate burdens carried by Indigenous Peoples, this data only reaches the surface of the lived experiences,” David-Chavez said, “including countless stories of intergenerational violence and resilience known to those who have protected our Earth’s lifeways and resources for countless generations. The importance of ensuring these stories are known and these injustices addressed drew me to collaborate on this study.”
The authors acknowledge that international instruments like the International Labour Organization Convention C169 on Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples play an important role for advancing Indigenous rights, but “current levels of ratification, implementation and monitoring are insufficient to ensure respect for such rights.”
The study emphasizes the need for governments to implement measures that further promote Indigenous rights and support environmental justice by ensuring real compliance with existing conventions and the protection of their land rights.
