Day 4: Reading (Decolonizing Climate Research and Policy)

As the climate crisis deepens, the discourse aimed at finding solutions continues to intensify. Increasingly, government agencies and world leaders are recognizing the critical importance of including Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in the development of sustainable responses. 

Indigenous-led solutions, fostered in community and informed through relations with lands, waters and plant and animal relatives are already happening and offer best practices. They can be scaled up and out in ways that transform systems. But these are massively underfunded while enormous sums are poured into non-Indigenous research and policy initiatives. Instead of the focus on how to bring Indigenous people and their knowledge into research and policy spaces, the focus needs to be on how non-Indigenous researchers and policy makers can actually learn to listen and direct their resources, time and efforts to supporting the vast wealth of Indigenous-led research, policy and best practices already happening across Mother Earth.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, Rebecca Sinclair, Beze Gray, Deborah McGregor, Jen Gobby, Decolonizing Climate Research and Policy: making space to tell our own stories, in our own ways, Community Development Journal, Volume 57, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 52–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsab050