indigenous

• Although there wasn’t much to celebrate at the COP28 climate summit for Indigenous peoples, who were vastly outnumbered by fossil fuel lobbyists, leading advocate Sara Olsvig points to some progress made.
• Olsvig is adamant that efforts to tackle the climate crisis must not infringe on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and that the approach to take must be centered on respect for human rights.
• She also successfully pushed for the final text of the summit to distinguish between Indigenous peoples and local communities, saying the long-held practice of conflating the two has often been to the detriment of Indigenous groups.
• “We have already reached the tipping points in a climate sense,” Olsvig says. “Now we are also reaching tipping points in a human rights sense. And this is a very, very worrying development for the world.”

DUBAI — It was Sara Olsvig’s love of ice that brought her to the desert of Dubai for the 2023 U.N. climate summit, COP28.

As an Inuit child growing up in a village in Disko Bay, Greenland, Olsvig would often dogsled and fish on the frozen sea and lakes, so she can tell how much has now changed: The sea ice is often wet and mushy, the air is humid or foggy, and the snow is sticky, making hunting and fishing harder.

Although Indigenous peoples’ ways of life are typically the most sustainable, they’re also often the most threatened by climate change — as well as by activities meant to mitigate its impact, such as the mining of minerals for the renewable energy transition. That’s what drives Olsvig, as chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) and a leading voice in the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus at COP28, to push for greater Indigenous participation and recognition of Indigenous rights at climate talks.

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