A deep connection and dependence on nature, especially forests, place these communities in severe danger. Climate change exacerbates difficulties that indigenous people have faced for centuries, including political and economic marginalization, loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination and poverty.

In a press release commemorating the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on Aug. 9, UN Secretary-General António Guterres affirmed the serious challenges faced by indigenous communities. Therefore, he emphasizes the importance of involving indigenous communities, especially the youth, in decision-making.

In fact, this isn't the first time the importance of such global commitments has been emphasized. Over the past 30 years, the rights of indigenous communities have been increasingly recognized through the adoption of various international instruments, such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007 and the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2016, among others.

The existence of indigenous communities is crucial because their population of 476 million is spread across more than 90 countries, according to the World Bank in 2022. The values that these communities uphold serve as examples of good practices for nature preservation, including climate change mitigation.

However, even as the global promotion of the importance of indigenous protection has increased in the last three decades, the fate of these entities has worsened.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2023 reported that during the past 40 years, in line with the rise in the global average temperature by 1.7 degrees per century, the highest increase in the earth’s average temperature in history, indigenous communities have faced doubled oppression. The extraction of natural resources displaces and impoverishes them while the temperature increase destroys the environment around them, making it increasingly. Difficult for them to sustain their livelihoods.

The question is, why have global campaigns and commitments not yet made a significant impact on improving the fate of indigenous communities?

There are three main causes of the marginalization and exclusion of indigenous communities: globalization, neocolonialism and neoextractivism. These three factors lead to the loss of land, forced displacement, high levels of poverty and violations of collective and individual rights.

These three factors emerged alongside the global industrialization of the 19th century, coinciding with increased fossil fuel use. Natural resource exploitation increased, along with the extraction of raw materials, both achieved through deforestation, which gradually displaces indigenous communities.

After the end of World War II, economic supremacy over nature became unsustainable with the advent of the global political-economic design: developmentalism. With international aid funds and capital from developed countries, many developing nations eventually achieved positive economic growth.

However, this success came at a steep cost, including severe damage to natural resources and the increasing displacement of indigenous communities.

Entering the 1990s, economic liberalization, investment and trade spread across the world, including in developing countries. The power of capital and the market economy outweighed all other development factors.

Meanwhile, all natural resources were considered only as economic commodities. The presence of indigenous communities living within and around forests was seen as an obstacle and consequently, they were often displaced.

International institutions like the UN frequently promote the importance of adopting indigenous values in natural resource management to achieve sustainable development. However, in many countries, these adoption efforts fail.

This is mainly because of tenure uncertainty, which hinders investment in sustainable tropical forest management by concession holders. Considering the slow growth of forests, businesses generally aim to maximize returns by rapidly harvesting entire forest areas and reinvesting elsewhere.

Preserving indigenous communities is often turned into a nostalgic and normative idea, but in policymaking and implementation, it remains marginalized.

The reluctance of the country’s policymakers to pass the Indigenous People Bill (RUU Masyarakat Hukum Adat), proposed in 2009, is one form of the state's lack of commitment to protecting Indigenous communities. By contrast, the same policymakers swiftly signed into law the omnibus bill on job creation.

This government remains hesitant even though the archipelago is home to 2,371 indigenous communities with a population of 70 million, according to Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) data from 2018.

Globally, the UN does little to address the “carbon pirates”, or global extractive companies that are encroaching upon forests inhabited by indigenous communities in the Amazon, particularly in Peru, as reported by The Guardian in January 2023.

The confiscation of indigenous communities' economic carbon rights and greenwashing practices within them receive little attention, but these cases have the potential to cause carbon emission reduction failure and the displacement of hundreds of indigenous community groups in forest regions.

The promotion of indigenous community protection, whether on a global or national level, remains hypocritical. On one hand, they emphasize the importance of preserving indigenous communities as the foundation for sustainable development, while on the other hand they choose to align with the capitalist political-economic design that is the root cause of the destruction of indigenous communities.

This is what intellectuals and environmental activists like Vandana Shiva refer to as reductionism. Reductionist thinking aims to support an economic-political structure based on exploitation, profit maximization and capital accumulation. This is the root of the growing ecological crisis.

It's nearly impossible to strengthen the existence of indigenous communities within an economic-political structure that only reinforces economic growth and capital accumulation. The very fabric of indigenous life is built upon a foundation of green economy systems, which in theory and practice oppose the growth-based economic system. These systems can only thrive in a national and global economic governance system that treats nature as an asset.

The UN secretary-general's call to provide opportunities to young members of indigenous communities to participate in decision-making and lead climate change efforts is a positive one. However, this means little if decision-makers do not cease their support for capital accumulation and growth.

Otherwise, calls like these will only end up as songs of hypocrisy, extinguished only after indigenous communities vanish with worsening climate change.

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The writer is an environmental specialist at KEHATI Foundation. The views expressed are his own.