Recognising the environmental sustainability of indigenous management of natural resources - Press Conference, UNCCD COP17

I I I I Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Mario de Sanchez.
I am the chair of the UNCCD CSO Panel and co chair of the Drynet Network.
Also associate at Peruvian CSO name Adré.
On behalf of the CSO Panel and DNt, we would like to welcome you to this Press Co conference and thank you for taking your time for being part of this important conversation.
Before introducing the speakers, I will start by explaining a little bit about the role of UNCCD Civil Society Organs panel, commonly known as the CSO panel.
The CSO panel serves as an official coordination and representation mechanism that facilitates engagement between civil society organizations and the UNCD process.
The panel is composed by one representative per region, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Western Europe and other groups.
We aim to bring together diverse civil society voices to the UNCCD and that's why we collaborate with networks like DryNet, a global network of civil society organizations working to promote sustainable land management in communities living in dry lands and other vulnerable ecosystems.
DryNt' be promoting these kind of exchanges not only at this COP but also at the other two Rio conventions, COPs taking place this year, contributing to the strengthening of synergies across the climate, biodiversity and land agendas.
I will introduce today our today focus for this press conference.
We meet a critical moment.
As many regions of the world, communities are facing unprecedented droughts, devastating wildfires, extreme heat, ecosystem degradation, and growing threats to food security and livelihoods.
This challenge reminds us that healthy land is not only an environmental issue.
It's fundamental to climate resilience, human well being, sustainable development, and peace.
Today's press conference brings together scientists, individuals knowledge holders, and civil society leaders to share perspectives from the front lines of land stewardship and restoration and to highlight solutions that deserve greater attention in global decision making processes.
We will share here that it's essential that the COP maintain civil society participation, synergies across a conventions and gender as key items on its agenda.
Adré today interconnected challenges require inclusive dialogue among governments, civil society, indigenous peoples, locals, communities, and other stakeholders.
CP 17 provides a vital space for this conversation helping to build partnerships and align efforts, sectors, and agendas.
I will now give the floor to our first speaker, doctor Burman, Basal, Range and scientist, an expert on Mongolian grassland ecosystems.
Thank you so much.
I'm so happy to speak today on behalf of Mongolia, on behalf of Asian continent.
When we speak like who is protecting the land, when the planet is burning, we should also ask who has been protecting those lands for the generation to generation.
A Mongolia, pasties are lived in the rangeland for long centuries and they have moved seasonally and they understand the water, rangeland, climate, everything.
The livelihood actually really depend on the healthy rangeland and their traditional knowledge and daily management really sustain the rangeland in better ways.
And for pastoralist, land is not simply resource.
The land is our livelihood, it's our culture, and land is actually our identity.
Today's pastores are facing so many different challenges, climate change, droughts, desertification, fire.
In Mongolia, actually the eastern part of Mongolia, we have step fire So where it's really needed to we have fire management solutions.
Otherwise, every year, we're going to have huge fire and then make the pastoralist more vulnerable.
Therefore, just before COV, we have organized a global pastoralist gathering in Mongolia, bringing voices from different countries and then which is involve almost 56 countries, about 250 pastoralists.
We made the global declaration for the UNCCity COP.
We believe that this declaration will be included the UNCCD statement to consider on this pastoralist problem and challenge to solve for different donors, different a as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now I will give the floor to Mr.
Anders Indigenous.
I will repeat again for the recording.
I will now give the floor to Mr.
Anders, Indigenous reindeer herder, acknowledge holder.
Luge Baked Oskalun and Mariana.
Good day to everyone.
My name is Andsh Oskal.
I am the Secretary-General of World reindeer herders and a Sami reindeer herder from the high Arctic part of Norway.
We have reindeer herders spread across the northern hemisphere, across ten national states, 24 different indigenous peoples.
I myself belong to the Sami people.
Before coming here, we had our eighth World Reindeherders Congress in Northern Mongolia with Tuk reindeer herders there.
Also, we had the recently global pastoralist gathering sponsored by Mongolia and the Global Alliance for Range Lands and pastoralists that produced a declaration and I call to your attention this Umbata declaration from the global pastoralist community.
So our life together with reindeer is based on a social contract that our people made with the reindeer at the beginning of time.
This contract dictates that we must take care of each other always.
We are to provide posture for the reindeer for all the eight seasons.
Our people have eight seasons, not four.
In return, the reindeer will provide everything that we need, our food, our clothing, our transportation, our shelter, our security.
But we find it, of course, increasingly difficult to uphold our part of this agreement because the land encroachment, especially in Fan Scandia and Scandinavia is very urgent and we have lost very large parts of our pasture land the last 50 years, which of course means that insofar as we need pasial land and access to pasture land to adapt to changing climate.
This is becoming very difficult.
You cannot expect pastoralists to adapt to climate change if you at the same time, remove the land that we depend upon to do that.
I will call your attention towards the Arctic region where I'm from, because the situation today is that climate warming is happening four times faster on average in the Arctic than the rest of the globe.
There are many reasons behind this, but there is something called the albedo effect.
Meaning that when the snow and ice is melting and the sun rays hit barren ground or water, more of the sun's energy is stored and it increases the melting, which again, this is a downward spiral, you could say.
In this picture, of course, we see that the climate is warming, yes, but it's also becoming more variable.
There are two main challenges that we have.
One is extreme events in winter where you could have rain and snow, which then freezes over to become ice layers.
It's a type of drought, though very different from drought in the dry land areas in the cold dry lands.
This drought means ice layers and locked pastures.
We call this in our language Guavi.
What we can see Quite clearly, we also have some publications on this, is that the frequency of these events are increasing.
On the other hand, the other major challenge at this point would be forest fires and where we have seen an increase in forest fires, especially in the eastern reindeer herding areas in Siberia in particular.
Now there are ways in which pastoralist peoples and indigenous peoples in the Arctic have handled fires in the past, lighting, counterfies, and so on.
There are some interesting projects on that in the Arctic Council, um But I will call your attention to the function of the Arctic climate system in the global climate system, because the Arctic and the Antarctic function as a cooler for the world's climate.
It means that limiting climate warming in the Arctic is very smart if you want to limit global climate change.
There, I would like to specifically mention that the latest science now has found that reindeer herding, reindeer grazing is actually a bit of a gem in this context because when the reindeer grazes on the Arctic tundra, if there are shrubs coming up, reindeer will graze them down, meaning that the snow cover will be intact for larger or longer periods, meaning that we avoid this albedo effect, which I spoke of earlier.
In fact, supporting reindeer herding and reindeer grazing is one way to limit climate change in the Arctic and thus limit the impacts of global warming on a planetary scale.
Those are a few things that I would like to mention.
Thank you very much, Olugit.
Thank you, Mr.
Hacks.
Now I will give the floor to Tatiana Blanco, specialist in tropical wetlands Restoration.
Thank you so much.
Yes, I am Tatiana.
I am an indigenous woman born on the shores of Lake Uruuru in the Bolivian Andean Highlands at more than 3,600 meters above sea level.
Close your eyes with me for 1 second.
Picture a child running barefoot beside pink flamingos, the cold water lapping at her ankles while her grandmother tells her that this lake is not just water, it is Pach mama or living Mother Earth.
That child was me.
Today, when I go home, I do not hear that water anymore.
I hear silence.
I see cracked earth where there was once abundance.
My own people, fisher, weavers, healers have become climate refugees.
On the land, their ancestors never left.
This is why I'm asking you, not only has a scientist but has a daughter of the lake, carrying the grief of watching a sacred place die and the first hope of watching my sisters bring it back to life.
With the woman of the Uu routine, we practice Aini reciprocity, the Andean law that says, What you take from the Earth, you must give back.
We have replanted tutorial weths by the thousands.
We have rebuilt flooding habitants with our own hands.
We are teaching our children in Amara, Murato, Quechua, and in science, so they inherit both worlds and the birds, the pink flamingos I told you, are returning.
But grief and hope are not enough to restore a planet on fire.
Indigenous peoples hold the knowledge and the will to heal these lands.
What we are missing is support, truly intentional, finance that reach us directly with our layers, without delay, because we are in an urgency, everyone, all of us.
As my elders taught me in Quichua, a Masua, a Malua, a Makel, do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy.
We ask the world to hold itself to that same standard, especially when it comes to the promises made to indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth, therefore, all of us.
We are not beneficiaries of land restoration.
We are its architects, its guardians, its original scientists.
Stand with us, Restoce us from your hearts as you will do with your beloved ones.
We will keep bringing our lake and our land back to life.
Let's do restore land together.
Hagal Apache Yuspagapan.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, information shared today shows why it's essential that UNCCD COP maintains civil society participation, synergies across the Rio convention and gender as key items on its agenda.
I will take this opportunity before I open the floor for questions to say on behalf of civil society that we are making a call on all parties attending this cop to ensure that the engagement of civil society organizations remains as a key topic in the agenda of this cop.
We publicly reaffirm that a meaningful engagement of civil society, indigenous peoples, and local communities are preconditions for legitimate implementation of this COP.
Land degradation neutrality will not be achieved without the people who live and work on the land.
We will now open the floor for questions, please, questions, not statements.
Keep in mind, we are in a press conference now, so we are happy to receive questions.
Please introduce yourself and your media organization before asking your questions.
So Okay.
Do we have some questions from media? Questions from the audience? Yes, please.
Hi, thank you.
I am Gonzalo To from Manga Latam.
Two years ago, civil society contributed to create an agenda that represents very important topics and its to face soil degradation and take action for land restoration.
Now, in these days, we've seen how some countries are ignoring these items apparently without a big argument.
As a civil society organization, and what are you going to do to keep working in these important topics? Do you think these kind of actions put in risk the participation of civil society organizations in the convention? Thank you.
Thank you so much for your question.
I cannot stress enough how much in this moment we need to be united all.
We need action that comes from all ends.
We can meet at a point to that point that we all need to reach, which is to be in harmony with Mother Earth.
If for that end, we are not all together, then I don't think we are going to be successful to reach that.
I think that is the message behind all the clamors from civil society organizations, indigenous peoples, and everyone that is asking for that support, for that being together to this end.
Because as we always say, We are all one with land, we are all one with Mother Earth.
That is how we should act towards our goals, towards what are we aiming for all of us, for our collective well being or as we say in my land, Summa Kana.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question.
Well, of course, this week was seen as a bit of a setback in terms of the involvement of the civil society.
Well, we don't know where this is going as of yet.
But I would like to say that last week, I mentioned the global pastoralist gathering, and that was in many ways a historical gathering where we were able to bring together um, some 300 pastoralists from over 100 nations that produced, as I said, this declaration.
This declaration, of course, is focused on CP but also beyond.
For us, last week marked a new beginning where we were able to come together as pastoralists and nomadic indigenous pastoralists from across the globe.
The global pastoralist community is near 500 million people.
And we are as pastoralists, our systems are providing food security on a global scale.
This was important in itself.
Now, we have talked about responsibility and we have tried to talk about moderation, a word that seems lacking in most environmental debates even today.
We have done that for some time.
Our organization started working with climate change as a systemic challenge already in 1998.
And we have been talking about these things and we will continue to talk about these things.
Sometimes these last 30 years, of course, we have questioned who's really listening.
But seeing as how we were as indigenous pastoralists on our homelands since time immemorial, we have snow terminology very specific to reindeer herding that is 11,000-years-old.
We have in our language over 318 words for snow.
We have some knowledge about the areas in which we have lived.
We were on these lands long before even the concept of national states was invented and certainly any Westphalian versions of it.
We will continue to be here.
We are still here as we used to say, and we want to take part in the debates within the UN system, within the CCD.
Other conventions too, we will continue to try to contribute because we know that we have some knowledge about our homelands that others don't have and we have something to contribute also in co production with science.
The challenges before us are of such proportions that we really need the best available knowledge to manage.
That must also include our knowledge systems, which have been established based on our very close relation and very deep dependence on nature since time immemorial.
So we stand ready to contribute our part.
But of course, there must be someone on the receiving end, and we hope that from our side that the challenges that has come up this week will find its solution because there is no viable path ahead unless we are all involved, as my sister said.
So Yes.
I would add to these statements that I think at this moment is very relevant, strengthening our networks, our capacity of collaboration among civil societies, indigenous people's collectives, initiatives, local communities groups.
During these days, you have witnessed several exchange among different groups and that's the richness of coming to these events, to these cops, this exchange of experience of knowledge is happening and is continue happening despite the challenges we are facing.
I think when we are back home, we will continue with this challenge and these efforts of building from our lessons building from our experiences and continue this interaction through the different networks we are part of and also continuing with hope for the next deliberations and preparing also ourselves for CP 18.
Any other question from the floor? Yes, please.
The demand in the front.
Thank you.
Thanks very much.
I appreciate the voices of our indigenous colleagues, colleagues who are reflecting the practices of indigenous peoples.
I find it curious that the progress towards the togetherness that Tatiana was referring to that is needed for us to pull together to save the planet is being hindered by political actions taken by nations where exploitation of natural resources is baked into the structure.
The political system is dominated by billionaires, trillionaires, and oligarchs and what this says for our collective responses to hold onto what the United Nations system has created in terms of a system of global governance that should be impacting more significantly on the climate as well as our management of all the other natural resources.
So what do you believe we should be doing here, but also what should we be doing back home to keep the flame burning or keep the rain falling more appropriately.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question.
Thank you so much.
I think that's one that all of us have wonder some night that we couldn't find some sleep, at least in my case.
Then it is when I go back to what I learned from the elders in my community and Then it is when we go back to our principles, when all of us go back to what do we hold in our core? I'm going to share with you what we do in my group and I hope is any help in that way.
One is to educate ourselves, educate the group, educate the friends, educate the sisters and brothers, so that it's not only that everybody is sure 100% of the action that you're doing in your initiative, but also everybody understands the message that should be conveyed so that it's not just that we are dependent on spokesperson, But we have many.
We have 1 million of voices raising up and speaking the truth and asking for what should be done.
The second is to always have or group.
There to have a group to which one we can rely for anything that I needed from us, from the community so that it can be translated to networks.
What Mariodi was saying.
Always understand that we depend on everybody and everybody also depend on us.
We are important.
Every one of us here plays a key role, even though literature or many things wants to tell you that no everything comes from top down.
I don't think so.
I'm a fervently believer that real action, real change always, not just sometimes, always comes from bottom to top.
The third one, scare.
What happens if we don't care for sisters or brothers in our group, in our community? Who is going to be tomorrow talking about the Totoas or the flamingos from my team? Who is going to be talking about the forest from the trees? If it's not all of us, then we need to take care of us.
We need to take care of each other to check in always among us.
How is our sister from this region doing? How is our sister or brother from this other one doing? We know that we are all standing, ready for the fight.
I hope this helps in any way.
Thank you.
Yeah, I just would like to add some more.
Just how we can involve more CSO voice into the different actions.
For the global gathering that we organized just two weeks ago, that was idea come from different regions.
Why not we can organize really involved in the pastoralist into the youth association or women association.
And create a unified one for the globally.
That will be bring the Passes voice heard for different policymakers.
For the last question, I just wanted to increase on behalf of just Mongolian perspective, so that here in Mongolia, we have rangeland degradation, especially central part of Mongolia and northern part of Mongolia due to the animal lot.
But this is the holistic thing.
We cannot really solve the rangeland problem without any economical things.
What we can see if we will work on livelihood of herders.
Support more value chain and then bringing them market, bringing them better management, then we can ask them to reduce the animal number.
The most of the projects are just they're working on the training and training and they're not really given market or possibility to sell the products with the premium price or high price.
Then this is at the end of the day, it's a livelihood of herders.
They should why the increase in animal number, it's their income.
That's why they increase in animal number and then which is the main drivers in the rangeland degradation in Mongolia.
I would say that the UACC cop especially the Mongolian perspective, they will pay attention for how we can work for this value chains so that the Mongolia is actually the main GTP come from the mining, but the second one is agriculture.
It's a cashmere, it's like fiber.
Now we have as a small country like Mongolia, We have to really consider an initial market.
We cannot apple to compete with the mass market.
We cannot apple to compete with the big countries.
This is just wanted to be a highlight for this press release.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Yes, about this oneness.
I spoke about our agreement with the reindeer.
But if you take a step back now, this story which we tell to our children and I was told when I was young, this story ends with the phrase, This agreement cannot be broken.
As you are a little kid, you think about that in one way.
As you grow up, you think about it differently and it starts to dawn on you the true wisdom of these old oral stories.
Because What does it mean that this agreement cannot be broken? Take a step back and think of this not as the Sami people's agreement with the reindeer, but humanity's agreement with nature.
If we do not uphold our end of that agreement, we will cease to exist.
If we don't take care of the reindeer, it can no longer take care of us and we will cease to exist as Sami reindehes.
And I think we are all human and it is part of human nature also that we need to see consequences before there's action.
Already 15, 20 years ago, we presume that while we were seeing climate change very clearly in our homelands, we also realized that others were not seeing any practical consequences of it.
I mean, there is no consequences of climate change here where we are sitting.
It's nice, we have light, we have air condition, and so on.
But with the fires in Europe, things may be changing that people start to think.
It was raining pretty badly before and I could see some water out there and I can't help but think that one of the global consequences of climate change is sea level rise.
With sea level rise, the way things are developing as we sit here, in 30 years, Trump's Marra Lago will be underwater.
That may be too late for him, but there are some consequences here.
But what to do? Well, one part of the problem as we see it is that what is sustainable? Do we know what is sustainable? I mean, we hear of sustainable airlines and all sorts of things.
Sustainable mining even go figure.
But what is sustainable really? Because consumer power is formidable in the global system we have.
But unfortunately, there is also, let's say, science that will bewilder people.
If you think of the tobacco industry, what it did for decades and decades to hide the consequences.
What is really sustainable? We need some mechanisms to figure that out because once we know as consumers what is really sustainable, then we can make a choice.
The other thing is that we have to start to talk about moderation.
Moderation.
That word is lacking altogether.
Who should moderate? Who should moderate first? What could I do? What could you do that we need? We have a global system that is as it is now in the political sense, we are operating on a political timescale, the next election, while we should have been operating on a generational timescale.
There's something really challenging about the global system as it is.
Well, in face of how to say, if you're facing a great opponent I can't find the English word, someone said that the only thing that works is relentless truth telling.
We have to keep going with that.
Let's talk about moderation and let's figure out what is really sustainable.
Meanwhile, we will be taking care of our reindeer and the reindeer takes care of us.
One of the things that the reindeer does for the global climate is to limit warming in the Arctic.
So we will stay at it.
We're still here on Logit.
Thank you and thank you all for joining us today.
We now close this press conference and invite those interest to continue this conversation to one on one interviews.
We'll give priority to that space.
We hope that the information and experiences shared today help raise awareness of the origin challenges that are facing communities and ecosystems and also contributing that the voices and solutions emerging from the front lines are heard by decision makers at all levels.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.