Interview Transcript

Transcribed by Otter AI

Kimberly White

Hello and welcome to Common Home Conversations. Today we are joined by Richard Ponzio, Director of the Just Security 2020 Program and a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. Previously, Richard directed the Global Governance Program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice, where he served as Director for the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice, and Governance.

Thank you for joining us today, Richard! 

Richard Ponzio

Thank you, Kimberly.

Kimberly White

Can you tell us more about your role at Stimson and what you're working on?

Richard Ponzio

I am a Senior Fellow and Director of the Just Security 2020 program. The program is focused on UN and broader global governance, innovation, strengthening, making the international system more inclusive, voices of civil society, of course, but non-state actors working with governments, and of course, international organizations like the United Nations to address the 21st-century challenges. From climate change to rising violence in parts of the world to, of course, the pandemic, which is on everybody's mind today.

Kimberly White

Very interesting! And speaking of the pandemic, we're currently going through a global health crisis, a climate crisis, and a biodiversity crisis. Can these become the common ground that we need to find new multilateral solutions, such as the Global Pact for the Environment, to our shared problems?

Richard Ponzio

If these issues don't, I don't know what will, in terms of rethinking our multilateral system, how the 193 member states come together. But as I said in my introduction, we're looking very much at solutions. But also capabilities, ideas, networks coming from non-state actors, global civil society is a terminology often used in this context. But it means a lot of things social media, social movements, actually. And religious organizations, to academics, think tanks, like the institution I'm a part of, but all the way down to the grassroots and community level organizing, at the same time, either part of civil society or working in its own right. The private sector, the business community, incredibly rich with talent, technical ingenuity, financial resources, of course, but you know, we look to them for leadership as well and working with governments and international organizations, which I presume we'll be talking a bit about because that's what my own research, scholarly work has focused on for years. And these two or three intertwined crises that you mentioned, the climate crisis biodiversity, and of course, the health crisis was really prominently featured in the COVID-19 pandemic that we're all experiencing. 

You know, never has there been such a maelstrom of forces that have forced the international community to rethink how we're organizing ourselves, how we're looking at these issues. Through global fora, such as the United Nations, the World Bank is very much on the frontlines of these issues. Major informal groupings of states such as the G20, they all have a contribution to make. But I think as a starting point, you refer to the Global Pact for the Environment. I think it's critical that as the Global Pact, in its early days of being discussed and negotiated, it really makes the point that, hey, we have all of these international agreements out there; there's principles associated with many of them. What are some of the common threads, common foundational principles between the major conventions on climate change on biodiversity, but again, hundreds of other agreements that deal with the global environment. I think if we have more coherence, and a sense of vision and a roadmap through this new instrument, called a Global Pact for the Environment, this will really, I think, build on the solidarity that we're seeing worldwide as a result of the global pandemic. And then we channel the sense of a common global identity, global citizenship, to then work on common global problem solving. And that's at the heart, again, of what the Global Pact for the Environment and its particular concerns with issues such as the biodiversity and climate crisis, I think they're just critical. And as we see today, health issues are intimately related to environmental concerns. And it's so important that we then look in an interdisciplinary fashion to address these problems simultaneously. But it's going to require a rethink both of our institutional framework and instruments that take our normative framework from previous years and upgrade them. And that's, in a sense, what the Global Pact for the Environment is all about.

Kimberly White

So essentially, at this point, we need all hands on deck.

Richard Ponzio

Absolutely. Hundred percent. And that's why it's great to see whether it's the annual meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and all the work that's gone into the massive 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Using technologies to have online consultations, it's really pushed the frontiers on how inclusive these UN policymaking processes can be. And the same thing needs to happen now for the Global Pact for the Environment. The ideas cannot come from within a small UN Secretariat or within the private sector alone; it's really got to be voices from different parts of humanity.

Kimberly White

Absolutely. As an expert in politics, governance, and international relations, what do you see as the biggest challenges of establishing this Global Pact for the Environment?

Richard Ponzio

The biggest challenge is not understanding and diagnosing the problems related to a whole host of environmental challenges. Not just climate, the big one, or, you know, if we let science guide us, we're going to get the vaccine, as we've been seeing in recent weeks, and fighting the pandemic. We even, I think, have a lot of tools in the toolbox for conflict resolution and pushing back against violent extremism, at the heart of all these issues. You mentioned my background and issues of governance and politics, especially at the global level. It's the fear that we are eroding and ripping apart the very foundations of the international system of governance that was created in the aftermath of a major cataclysmic World War, the second world war in the early 1940s. And so, this past year has been monumental, not just because of the pandemic, but the 75th anniversary, a chance to review and reflect on the UN system. But what we're seeing at the same time is rising nationalism, an exclusive form of nationalism that really works against the core principles, the spirit of global cooperation on any issue, including, I think, the environmental themes that we'll be talking about today. And unless we realize how corrosive, how negative and deleterious it is to these institutions, their basic functioning, the signals that members of the Secretariat that starting with the Secretary-General of the United Nations get when they hear lack of cooperation. You've heard a term called vaccine nationalism arise.

Even with the hope that is provided by solving the pandemic, now there's going to be questions about  which countries and who within those countries will get access to the vaccine first, and that there needs to be a treatment of an issue of such critical magnitude at the global level. Li...

Interview Transcript

Transcribed by Otter AI

Kimberly White  

Hello and welcome to Common Home Conversations. Today we are joined by Prue Taylor, Deputy Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law. Prue is also a member of the IUCN Commission of Environmental Law and its Ethics Specialist Group. She was awarded the outstanding achievement award from the IUCN in recognition of her contribution as a world pioneer on law, ethics, and climate change. Thank you for joining us today! 

Prue Taylor  

You're very welcome, Kimberly.

Kimberly White

So climate change doesn't recognize borders; it spans our globe reaching the most remote corners, affecting all of us. It's happening now, and it's happening everywhere. And it's happening at an alarming rate. Can you tell us about some of the adverse effects of climate change you're seeing in New Zealand?

Prue Taylor

Absolutely, I can, because they're happening on a daily basis. And they're happening here in New Zealand in ways that are increasingly dramatic. And there is a growing acceptance that the impacts of climate change that we're seeing here in New Zealand are, in fact, associated with, you know, changes to global atmospheric temperatures. So what we're seeing in New Zealand, temperature increases, which are manifesting in more extreme drought events. So these drought events are longer than more severe, and they're more frequent. And that's really impacting us as a nation because we're essentially still an agricultural nation. But also, our large urban areas are really starting to suffer. And Auckland City, which is our biggest urban area in New Zealand, is, as we speak, in the middle of a really serious water crisis. So there are a lot of water restrictions for us and the city right now. On the flip side of the coin, we're seeing a lot of extreme rainfall events; when the rain comes, it really comes. And that is exacerbating the flooding risk for New Zealand. New Zealand, as a country that is very, very prone to floods anyway, it's one of the significant natural hazards that we have. And climate change is accelerating and exacerbating those flooding events and risks. We're also seeing more frequent storms and much more storm damage. We're a long, narrow country in the middle of the massive Pacific Ocean. So we're seeing a lot of coastal damage. In terms of the ocean, which is very close to my heart, we're seeing increasing numbers of ocean heatwaves. So that is really where areas of the ocean are warming up very, very significantly around New Zealand. So we see some parts of the ocean around New Zealand with very elevated ocean temperatures between around four to five degrees Celsius higher than they would normally be. And that's really, really a dramatic climate change impact. But probably the climate change impact that has really galvanized New Zealanders recently has been wildfires. Now wildfires is not something that New Zealand has really experienced very much in the past, unlike, of course, Australia. But very recently, we've had a number of wildfires impacting urban areas, not just our forestry sector, but also our urban areas. And that's really started to focus the attention of New Zealanders on climate change impacts. And all of this has to be seen in a context which is quite unique to New Zealand. And that is that we're in the middle of the massive Pacific Ocean, which means that to some degree, ocean function does protect us from some of the most dramatic impacts of climate change. In other words, the Pacific Ocean has been seen traditionally as a moderating element that would kind of insulate us somewhat from the impacts of increased global atmospheric temperature change. So it seems as though we're not as insulated and protected by the Pacific Ocean as we had thought we might be.

Kimberly White

That's interesting. We've seen wildfires in California, and you know, we see some significant flooding in Florida from climate change. One of the most interesting videos I think we've seen is from Miami. During the king tide a few years ago, there was a lot of flooding, and they filmed an octopus in a parking garage. 

Prue Taylor

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes when you see those, you get those images of something dramatically out of place. They shock your consciousness, don't they?

Kimberly White

Definitely. I think that was a wake-up call for a lot of people down in Miami for sure. As a professor and expert in international environmental law, do you think we need a new legal innovation to address the global climate and biodiversity crises?

Prue Taylor

Yes, I mean, if we open our eyes, and we look at the situation that we're currently in with, you know, massive decline and our ecological systems and, you know, the sorts of climate change impacts that I've just talked about. When we look at where we're at and what we're experiencing, what natural systems, what's happening to natural systems; How could we not acknowledge that we need some fundamental, fundamental change to our law and governance systems? I mean, to deny that we need change is to deny reality. And answering this question of governance absolutely, we need fundamental change. And, you know, I've been working in this area for 30 years, and I can honestly say, I feel that we are going backward. Okay, we've made some incremental improvements in some areas. And, you know, we have those incremental improvements in some areas. If we focus on those, we could say, well, we've achieved something. Something better than if we had had no international law and governance in this area. But frankly, when you look at it at an, you know, a level of accumulated impacts, and pace and scale, when really all we've been doing in the last 30 years, is an accelerated version of a really 1970s pollution control kind of approach, where we just look at continuing business as usual, but finding ways to mitigate or reduce harm, and I call this the do less harm approach. But what happens is, over time and scale, that less harm accumulates and accelerates and in combination with other harms and degradation to connected ecological systems. Everything is driving downwards. Everything is spiraling downwards. And the other fundamental or another fundamental failure of our existing law and governance framework, which really calls out for change, is the barrier that's inherent in the system. Where nation-states grudgingly negotiate what they're prepared to do or what they're not prepared to do through or from the perspective of national self-interest. There is no sense of collective responsibility for the benefit of everyone that needs to qualify how we exercise national self-interest. So this kind of grudging, incremental, piecemeal negotiation of ecological crises, as they suddenly become apparent in isolation from other ecological crises, is imperiling our existence and imperiling the earth system, so we have to change.

Kimberly White

Absolutely. And with the pandemic, we see how interconnected everything is. These aren't standalone issues.

Prue Taylor

Yep, absolutely right. They're not standalone issues. But I think they, you know; COVID really demonstrates the magnitude of what's going on and the pace of what's happening. And therefore the scope of change that's required. 

Kimberly White

So how can the kno...

Interview Transcript
Transcribed by Otter AI

Kimberly White

Hello and welcome to Common Home Conversations. Today we are joined by Hindou Ibrahim, Founder and President of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad. Hindou is also the Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change and a UN SDG Advocate. Thank you for joining us today! 

Hindou Ibrahim

It's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Kimberly White

You have been a steadfast champion for human rights and sustainable development. What was the inspiration behind your lifelong dedication to bettering our planet?

Hindou Ibrahim

Yeah, I mean, I'm so excited to be championing the Sustainable Development Goals because, for me, they are talking about our life. So when we talk from the objective one who is fighting poverty, or to five with the gender, or 13 with climate change, all the 17 of them take us in the partnership. They're talking about how we can improve our life, how we can improve our society, and how we can make it better than now by respecting people in climate. So for me, it is obvious because, from the communities that I come from, we always take all the problems and all the crises together to resolve all of them. So that's why I am so excited to be championing the sustainable development goals for my peoples and for all Indigenous peoples, and at the end of the day, for the planet in general.

Kimberly White

That's wonderful. So we're seeing how climate change is impacting every corner of our planet in many ways. Can you share with us how climate change is affecting your country and your region?

Hindou Ibrahim

So I am coming from the Sahel regions and coming from Chad, who has a very different landscape. We have a hundred percent desert in the north. And we have savannah in the Sahel in the middle. And then we have the tropical forests in the Congo basin in the south. So when you live in the three different ecosystems in a landlock and when your life depends on the ecosystem, you know exactly the impact of climate change. You do not read it in the book or watch it on the TV; you live it. I give you an example of how we are really impacted. We got the research from my organization from 1999 to now, and the chart is already on plus 1.5-degree increase. And why we see that every day, our dry season becomes much longer. With a very, very long sun and heavy sun that's coming up to 50 degrees Celsius. When you go to the desert, it's about 54 degrees Celsius. And that impacts our environment and impacts the rain because the rain season also changed, it's become much shorter and coming with the heavy rain that can flood all the places. For example, this year, where we have all the Sahel under flood. You have even in the townspeople take the canoe to go from one neighborhood to another one. And four months before it was the heat, and the very dry heat where the crops cannot grow. And it will end up with food insecurity because when you don't have regular rain, it cannot penetrate the soil, it cannot leave the vegetation to regenerate. And that impacts the food insecurity of the communities. And at the end of the day, the environmental impact, it's going to change the social life of the people. It creates conflict among the communities that are fighting to get access to the shrinking resources. And one of the examples I give it's around Lake Chad. Lake Chad is the fifth biggest freshwater that we have. Around this lake in 1960, it was 25000 kilometers square of this freshwater shared between Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic. Now the lake is shrinking to 2000 kilometers square of freshwater. So you have 90% of the water just evaporated because of the heat. And suddenly, there are more than 50 million people whose living is dependent on this fragile ecosystem. They are farmers, they are fishermen and pastoralists from my community. So what do those people have to do?  Because they depend on the end of the month's salaries, they depend on the rain. They depend on the ecosystem of this area of lake. So they just fight among themselves to get access to those resources. Some of them become internally displaced; others become refugees. And most of them, especially the youth, become a migrant, cross-border, and then maybe cross the oceans. So the climate is impacting all the single steps of our life in development.

Kimberly White

One of the most powerful change agents overlooked throughout society is women. Studies have shown that women are disproportionately impacted by climate change. According to the United Nations, 21.5 million people are displaced annually by weather hazards worsened by climate change. Out of those displaced, women account for 80%. How are women critical in the fight against the climate crisis?

Hindou Ibrahim

Sure, I mean women are at the front line of the climate change impact. Because when the weather changes, maybe it is just the weather for ordinary people, but for the people who depend on these resources, it is for them, life changing. And especially the woman, because in our communities, women are the ones who are responsible for feeding the communities. So they are the ones who, of course, collect the water, the food, but also traditional medicine. So during the rainy season, we collect all the fruits and all the vegetables that we do have, then dry them up to use them during the dry season, for the entire season. But there is not enough for everyone. So they found themselves fighting just to get access to those resources, who call it food, it is the livelihood for us. 

On the other hand, when there is a dry season, and there are not enough resources, the man responds by going away. So when they leave the places, they leave the woman and the children behind who have to fight for the daily best in order to cope and adapt to find the food for their families. So they are really the most vulnerable. And of course, they cannot maybe migrate a long path. And when there is a crisis that comes, like around Lake Chad, when there is the shrinking of the resources, it's also helping the terrorist groups settle there like Boko Haram. And then the violence starts in those places. And the women and children have to take their children and leave the place. In the end, they become internally displaced or a migrant in their own homeland from one region to another one, and then they become the most vulnerable again. It is not the issue that they are climate refugees or whatever. But they are really internal migrants, they are internal refugees in their own home countries, not because of the economic reason, but because of the environment that's degraded and they cannot get any access as they used to, to get food and medicine for their children and ensure the generations.

Kimberly White

That really shows how interconnected everything is- the environment, social issues, and security. 

Hindou Ibrahim

Yes, of course, I mean, that's why for us, we cannot talk on all this crisis in silo. Because when we talk about insecurity, talk about the rebellion groups or terrorist groups that take the opportunity. They take the opportunity because they found the people who are already poor. And then they increase this poverty everyday with climate change, and they take the opportunities to distill what they have done. And if a person does not have dignity in these c...

Interview Transcript
Transcribed by Otter AI

Kimberly White
Hello and welcome to Common Home Conversations. Today we are joined by Professor Kim Sang-Hyup, Founder of the Coalition for Our Common Future, President of the Jeju Research Institute, and visiting professor at the Graduate School of Green Growth at KAIST. Thank you for joining us today! So, you were appointed as the Blue House Future Vision Secretary in 2008 and contributed to Korea’s historic low carbon green growth vision. Later in 2011, you became the Senior Secretary to the President for Green Growth. Please tell us more about these experiences.

Professor Kim Sang-Hyup
Yeah, well, to make a long story short, the low carbon green growth was a new paradigm of Korea. And the idea is very simple. It is about combating climate change very aggressively and ambitiously and also transforming the challenges by climate change into new opportunities. We thought we could have double-digit trillion opportunities by achieving low carbon green growth worldwide, not to mention Korea. And it was announced in the year 2008, in celebration of Korea’s national independence day, that was in August. But only a month later, if you remember it, the Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. And then, the global financial crisis began all around the world. So only a month later, after the proclamation of low carbon green growth of Korea, many people said Korea would be the fastest sinking ship, even before it started the new national vision. However, the President of Korea at the time, Mr. Lee Myung Bak, thought differently. We fought that with the New Deal projects. It was about a $50 billion scale stimulus package, but that was to prepare the future low carbon infrastructure. It was about creating a resilient water infrastructure. It was about creating green energy infrastructure and transport structures. By exercising that large scale stimulus package in the name of the Green New Deal, we created more than 700,000 jobs. And also, it created a great enhancement of green technology competitiveness. But what was really important, by exercising that Green New Deal measure, we set up a target for the first time throughout the Korean industrial history, a target to cut greenhouse emissions that was minus 4 percent cut by the year 2020. And throughout the Green New Deal, Korea could reduce the emission growth rate from 10 percent, that was in 2010. In 2012, it went down to almost zero. That was a remarkable achievement. And besides that, we also tried to institutionalize Green Growth not to be hindered by the political regime change. So we laid out very important legal frameworks. A basic act for low carbon green growth, an act for green buildings, an act for smart grid, and more than anything else, we made a legal framework for emission trading scheme. That was the first of its kind in Asia that was later on followed by China. And also, we try to institutionalize our Green Growth efforts. That’s how we came up with the new international organization, the Global Green Growth Institute, that was initiated by Korea and many countries of like-minded groups.

We could also host the GCF headquarters, one of the very important new architecture of the UN. GCF stands for Green Climate Fund. We competed with Germany and Switzerland, but I believe we hosted the headquarters of GCF. So we institutionalized and we internationalized Green Growth during the period of my service at the Blue House. But politics always matter after the political regime change. The succeeding government didn’t seem to like the Green Growth very much. So it didn’t continue well. And the emission growth rate began to go up. That’s not a happy story. But I will tell you later, but we have a Green New Deal, again, facing the pandemic crisis. So I do think we still have hope. Yeah, that’s how I remember our efforts in the term that I worked for the public community in Korea.

Kimberly White
Well, that’s really impressive. I think a lot of us can relate to the regime change when environmental efforts aren’t necessarily always supported. And we must have that political will to recognize climate change and take action because it’s affecting all of us. So it’s essential without a doubt. You are also the Founder of the Coalition for our Common Future. Can you tell us more about this initiative?

Professor Kim Sang-Hyup
Yeah. Thank you very much for asking that question. You know, Our Common Future itself is the title of the very famous report, which is the Brundtland report on sustainability that was back in 1987, more than 40 years ago. So Our Common Future is a widely known subject to many people in the world. But the Coalition of Our Common Future reflects the idea that our efforts should be interconnected all around the world. That should be connected. That’s why I picked the name coalition, solidarity, whatever you may say. So we need more cooperation around the world. That’s the meaning of the social entity for Our Common Future. And there are two important signature projects, or you can call it lighthouse projects. One is the Green Big Bang projects. The idea is to have green energy, green mobility, and green technology work together in a very interoperable way and to move faster and bigger. That’s for creating a new industrial ecosystem in a low carbon manner. The other important project is the project for the young generation; we call it Voice from the Young. Because I believe young generations are the real stakeholders in this era. We are trying to empower young generations and give them chances to be real stakeholders, and hopefully, decision makers. And Climate Scouts is one of the projects reflecting that spread. We are nurturing university students and supporting young students to help younger people, elementary school students through the learning relay process. That’s one of the projects the Coalition for Our Common Future is doing. And I think that is exactly in line with the initiative of the Common Home of Humanity.

Kimberly White
I love what you’re doing, and I think we see the youth really speaking up these days. So it’s great that you’re working with them and working with them on climate and empowering them for those future decisions. That’s fantastic. So how would the proposal from the Common Home of Humanity help achieve these goals and contribute to the realization of a sustainable future?

Professor Kim Sang-Hyup
Well, you know, when somebody breaks into your home, then he should be, he should get some penalty. Is that right?

Kimberly White
Yes. Yeah, definitely.

Professor Kim Sang-Hyup
Yeah, yeah, if somebody breaks into your home, then he will be heavily penalized. But yeah, I actually think that the earth system is our home. And the idea is really appealing. The diplomatic negotiations on climate change began in 1995, in the name of the Conference of Parties, that was held in Berlin, Germany. And I attended the Conference of Parties, the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark in 2009, since then I have never missed the Annual Conference of Parties on Climate Change.

Kimberly White
That’s impressive.

Professor Kim Sang-Hyup
Yeah, yeah. But during those 25 long years of diplomacy on climate change, yeah, we have a Paris Agreement on climate change. That is really a remarkable thing. But to my sorrow, with that agreement, our global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing. This year is an exception due to the coronavirus, maybe about 6 or 7 percent minus. And it’s not because we made the right political choic...

Interview Transcript
Transcribed by Otter AI

Kimberly White  

Hello and welcome to Common Home Conversations. Today we are joined by Janene Yazzie, Co-Convenor of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group on Sustainable Development. Thank you for joining us, Janene. Please tell us more about your work as Co-Convenor of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group on Sustainable Development of the UN High-Level Political Forum on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals?

Janene Yazzie  

Yes, the International Indian Treaty Council and Tebtebba Foundation really organized themselves to get involved with the beginning of the discussions around the Sustainable Development Goals. And our colleagues Galena and Roberto Borrero were really at the forefront of ensuring in the negotiations around the development of the SDGs that Indigenous peoples were included. And because of that work and the recognition of the shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals was a shift meant to increase participation of stakeholders and other civil society organizations. It became very apparent for our organizations and our two colleagues that we had to be participating in the development of the metrics and the development of the processes for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. And so because of them, Indigenous peoples are mentioned throughout different aspects of the goals and the metrics that were created to measure progress towards implementation. The Tebtebba Foundation and International Indian Treaty Council became recognized as the co-conveners of the Indigenous Peoples Major Groups. We're one of nine civil society organizations and major groups that are recognized and that engaged with the high level political forum on the SDGs. And through that work, we ensure the participation of Indigenous representatives from all of the seven social-cultural regions recognized by the UN. And we facilitate their participation in expert group meetings in high-level discussions during the HLPF as well as all of the other side events that happened with other mechanisms. And in this manner, we ensure that the countries that do submit voluntary national reports. Countries that are developing processes and mechanisms nationally to address the goals outlined in the 2030 agenda are also being held accountable to the Indigenous peoples that reside within their territories. And it's been a lot of slow work for a while.

 I think it's taken a while for this mechanism to find its footing and for the high level political forum to really be structured and organized in a way to make it meaningful. And it's been an uphill battle to increase and advocate for meaningful participation in the actual decision making processes of the high level political forum. But just in the past three years that I've been involved in learning about the history and the development of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group and our involvement with the SDGs, we're seeing a great shift of the streams of work, of the way that the SDGs are being picked up more and more by different countries, and even how the work all of the streams of work are being collaborated across the different UN mechanisms. So it's an exciting time. Obviously, with COVID-19, it made our issues much more difficult to get addressed. One of the things we've learned as being co-convenors of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group is that so many of our Indigenous peoples and the communities they come from lack access to critical community infrastructure, especially internet and cell service. And so with the COVID-19 pandemic, we faced some extraordinary barriers and challenges to keeping momentum behind increasing meaningful participation in the high level political forum and in the expert group meetings on the different Sustainable Development Goals.

So we've been working very hard to get resources, financial or otherwise, to some of our most vulnerable communities. To somehow support them getting hooked up to the internet, or to service that can allow them to continue the work that we've been doing collectively across our different regions. And it's through that collaboration that we really find our strength as Indigenous peoples, you know, like all of our communities are on the frontlines of the impacts of climate change, of environmental degradation, of unsustainable development, and development schemes that are harmful to our ecosystem functions and to the continuance of our traditional lifeways. And so by serving as co-convener, we really serve as like the facilitators of organizing our movement and advocating collectively for our rights in these spaces.

Kimberly White

Well, you're doing such important work- it's fantastic. And like you said, Indigenous peoples are on the frontlines of climate change. We're seeing it impact all corners of our planet. Can you tell us how climate change is affecting the Navajo Nation and what you see in your community?

Janene Yazzie

Absolutely. This has really been the core of my work. I've always been a social justice advocate, I think, you know, being Indigenous and born into this world, it's kind of a path that is already laid for you. Because all our communities are always dealing with layers of challenges and layers of systemic oppression that very much inform our lived experience. And so when in 2011, when I was faced with having to make several career choices, I was volunteering at the United Nations permanent forum on Indigenous issues and came across a report. It was a climate risk assessment report. And it was done as a collaboration between a number of scientists, and I was specifically looking at the risk that we're going to be faced by the Navajo nation in the southwest United States due to the impacts of climate change. And reading that report really scared me. I was a new mother. I was a young professional at this crossroads of sorts. And the report really laid out and connected a lot of the things that  I knew and have experienced in my communities, like the loss of water sources, the increased desertification, the loss of vegetation, and then how these cumulative impacts we're increasing the concentration of environmental toxins that have been accumulated over generations of extractive industry, operations in our communities. And in my communities, in particular, we've been struggling with a legacy of uranium mining and the impacts of the 1979 Church Rock, uranium mill tailings spill. And so seeing this report and seeing the predictions that by 2017, there would be a dramatic shift because of the lack of availability of water. And that those people who were continuing a lot of our traditional lifeways of sheep herding, livestock rearing, food, maintaining our traditional food systems, would find a lot of those activities were where it would be no longer viable, just because of the impacts of increased desertification due to climate change in our territories. And so that was like a wake up call and really brought me back home. And I was so sure that when I came back home that everyone would be talking about these issues. Everyone would be, you know, trying to build solutions around how to create more effective mitigation and adaptation solutions. And that wasn't the case when we moved back. My nation was deeply involved in a long, what's been a very long battle for securing our nation's water rights. And so we came back with the intention of addressing climate change impacts and issues, but landing in the intersection of working in the nexus of water, energy, and food systems. And focusing particularly on helping to bring this data and bring thes...