The Impact of the Renewable Energy Rush on Indigenous Peoples

By: Catherine Fink

Indigenous peoples’ lands and territories constitute at least 28% of the global land surface. Indigenous people represent 5,000 unique cultures worldwide, and they protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. At the same time, despite having contributed the least to climate change, many indigenous people will experience the most drastic impacts from it if humans don’t ramp up renewable energy production rapidly and worldwide. Yet is it possible to do so without repeating the atrocities of the past or worsening indigenous peoples’ circumstances in the present?

To be clear, indigenous people are not a monolith, but for the purposes of this discussion, “The term indigenous peoples is a common denominator for distinct peoples who, through historical processes, have been marginalised and denied their right to control their own development” and, typically, indigenous people “share a determination ‘to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples.’.” They are also “among the poorest of the poor and… the most threatened segment of the world’s population in terms of social, economic and environmental vulnerability.” Thus, decisions about land use are particularly important for indigenous communities on many interconnected levels.

While there are many potential benefits to ramping up renewable energy production as quickly as possible, there are also distinct drawbacks and threats, some of which are already being felt by indigenous communities. For example, there were over 200 allegations of negative human rights impacts from renewable energy development between 2010-20 alone, most involving the wind and solar sectors in Latin America. And yet, there is huge potential for renewable energy development and greenhouse gas sequestration on indigenous lands; for example, tribal lands in the contiguous US have the potential to create >9 gigawatts of renewable energy and in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, 90% of indigenous lands are carbon sinks. Plus many minerals critical to the renewable energy transition are available on indigenous lands; for example, over 80% of lithium supplies are in lands that belong to or are important to indigenous peoples.

In order to meet the Paris Agreement targets and limit global warming to +1.5 degrees C, governments around the world need to control greenhouse gas emissions through these and other strategies. Since the energy sector is the largest source of emissions worldwide, many countries are incentivizing renewable energy projects like solar, wind, geothermal, and electric vehicles, including the US with the Inflation Reduction Act which offers tax credits. Since 2009, 114 of 218 renewable energy projects have reached “deployment” status on indigenous land in the US, with over 100 more in the pipeline. To accelerate this trend, the Biden Administration has allocated IRA funding for tribes, and the Department of Energy is offering $50 million in grants to tribal nations for RE projects.

If done right, renewable energy development on indigenous land can have many benefits and lead to more energy justice for indigenous people, as in the US alone 17,000 tribal homes have no power and up to 1 in 5 homes on the Navajo Reservation and 1 in 3 homes on the Hope reservation. Other potential positives include ending indigenous economic dependence on extractive industries which often bring prostitution and violence against indigenous women. Instead, renewable projects may offer a different ethos towards the community and indigenous-led project development, new job possibilities and technical training to indigenous workers, tribal access to reliable clean energy, and additional financial incentives for tribal participation in renewable energy projects.

However, there are barriers to renewable energy development on indigenous lands. For those tribes exploring investments in renewable energy, projects are often held up by limited access to power lines and long wait times to link their projects to the grid due to geographical isolation, financing challenges for tribes, and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Land ownership considerations can also stall projects as, while indigenous people customarily claim and manage more than 50% of the world’s land, they only legally own 10% of it, and much of that is held in trust by national governments. This is both a reflection of historical Western attitudes towards indigenous peoples and a hindrance for maintaining their sovereignty and cultural integrity today, making them especially vulnerable to the potentially exploitative decisions of outsiders. There is often little legal recourse when their rights are violated, and many times sacred and historical-use sites are sacrificed for “the greater good” that renewable energy projects are said to bring. As such, some indigenous groups, such as the Sami in northern Europe question the need to locate renewable energy on indigenous lands, arguing that they should not have to give up their land and traditions to support unsustainable lifestyles: “We distance ourselves from the resource rush and the overconsumption that have caused the climate challenges that the world faces today.”

One potential solution to these challenges is to effectively engage indigenous people in decision-making around renewable energy development. Right now, <1% of foreign aid to address climate chance goes directly to indigenous people, despite studies showing the important role they have in driving effective and equitable environmental protection. And funding isn’t the only pitfall: in order to avoid replicating past patterns of disrespect and abuse towards native peoples, special care must be taken to include and prioritize indigenous communities in the process of scaling up renewable energy, especially given that, “Complexities surrounding tribal autonomy and land rights, such as jurisdictional restrictions, bureaucratic issues, legal requirements, and internal administrative conflicts within tribes, can complicate renewable energy development processes.”

There are several international protocols to help guide this process and to encourage indigenous participation in decision-making. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples “is the most comprehensive instrument detailing the rights of indigenous peoples in international law and policy, containing minimum standards for the recognition, protection and promotion of these rights,” with Art. 7 focusing on the duty to procure “free, prior, and informed consent” from indigenous peoples prior to commencing any action that might impact their lands or rights; however, it is not legally binding. The International Labor Organization Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 (1989) is the strongest legal instrument to date, designed to protect the human rights of indigenous people and acknowledge “the aspirations of these peoples to exercise control over their own institutions, ways of life and economic development and to maintain and develop their identities, languages and religions, within the framework of the States in which they live.” However, to date only 23 countries have ratified the ILO 169 (the US not being one of them).

If world leaders truly want to take advantage of the large swathes of open land, mineral reserves, and deep reservoirs of traditional knowledge that indigenous communities have to offer, governments should: 1) take steps to authentically engage and build consensus; 2) give tribes permitting authority to fast-track wanted projects and to veto unwanted ones; and 3) work to, “Merge world views – consider what [W]estern and Indigenous perspectives have to offer and work on a new way to make decisions which protect, respect, and sustain people and the environment.”