COP16: The indigenous NWT-Taiwan-Cancun connection

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      Members of the Canadian Youth Delegation are blogging from the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. Daniel T’seleie, a Yellowknife resident, filed this post.

      I finally got into the UN conference centre on Thursday (December 2), and the first thing I did was head out to support the Indigenous Environmental Network with their rally outside the main negotiating area. They even gave me the bullhorn to speak for a while.

      I met one indigenous fellow from Taiwan. He politely asked where I was from, and I told him I was from “Northwest Territories, Canada”.

      “Oh, NWT!” he said.

      I was pretty shocked to hear an indigenous person from Taiwan, who I was meeting in Mexico, throw out the “NWT” acronym without me ever having said it. Turns out he went to university in Canada, lived in Yellowknife for a while, and flew around the NWT doing geological surveys.

      We had a good discussion about how nice the land is up north, troublesome bears, and how skilled bush pilots are. He’s had a couple hairy landings and take-offs, like the time a swift wind almost prevented them from getting airborne before they reached the end of the lake. When they finally took off, the floats nicked the tops of the trees!

      I felt like I was sitting around a camp fire back home, instead of standing outside the fanciest hotel I’ve ever been at. (I’m not staying there; it’s just where the conference is.)

      Normally I complain a lot in my blogs, mostly because I’m an idealist and I think the world can always be made better, but I do acknowledge that my people up north have it better than many people in this world. We still have our land, we can still hunt, we can drink the water, and we are now allowed to practise and preserve our cultures and languages (but we do have to stop climate change to preserve all these precious gifts.)

      One thing many indigenous people here are talking about is the REDD scheme that is being negotiated (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation). The idea is that protecting forests from being logged will help keep greenhouse gases out of the air, and so companies can keep on polluting as long as they pay to preserve forests somewhere in the world.

      Some are worried that their forests may be cut down and replanted with non-native crops that still count as “forests” under the REDD policy. This would destroy their traditional ways of life.

      Others seem to be working on agreements that would actually protect their traditional forests, which is a good thing, but there is concern over the companies that are paying to protect these forests.

      If a company pays to protect a forest in one country, but destroys forests in another through logging, mining, or fossil fuels developments, is that a good thing?

      It’s a tricky, tricky place these UN negotiations.

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