May 16, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

According to Reuters during 19 May and 6 June United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur Doudou Diène of Senegal will travel to the United States of America to investigate apparently growing evidence of racism. What seems to be stimulating this unusual action by the Commission on Human Rights is the democratic primaries for US President prominently involving Senator Barak Obama (D-Il) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). In the United States of America, as in Canada, Mexico and the other American states bigotry and violence against indigenous peoples is at an all-time high. Despite this fact, the UN Commission is focusing on visits with lawmakers, local and federal officials and judical authorities in eight major cities: New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Oreleans, Miami, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.Urban populations do not generally contain substantial numbers of indigenous peoples. Indeed, the intollerance, violence and bigotry committed against native peoples takes place in the rural areas–out of view of official investigations. Thousands of native peoples have been killed with impunity by state-support militias even as discrimination, bigotry and violence in other forms have been imposed on the living. In Mexico and the United States, native peoples are violently treated at the border, discriminated against over political rights, economic rights and social rights. In Chile, native peoples are denied access to their own lands by the government to support and protect mining companies extracting copper from underneath villages.

Will these and other incidents of racism, intolerance, bigotry and physical violence be the subject of Mr. Diène’s investigations? It is unlikely. While Mr. Diène may have good intentions, he is missing the mark and he is inadvertently aiding those who would protect states’ governments and corporations as well as individuals from special exposure. It would appear that native peoples must take their own initiatives to protect themselves since it is clear the Commission on Human Rights cannot or will not.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: racism, bigotry, UN, human rights

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April 23, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Speaking at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations (23 April 2008) Bolivian President Evo Morales called on indigenous peoples’ delegates to recognize the importance of ancient traditions and knowledge held by Fourth World nations as the essential ingredient for reversing the adverse effects of Climate Change.

Morales, according to Climatewire, said “Climate change offers proof that the world must undergo a fundamental realignment of its economic system.” The alternative to persistent consumption, according to President Morales is the balance between human need and natural reproduction provided by Fourth World cultures–the knowledge and practices rooted in intergenerational experience.

Economies centered on capital accumulation are the cause, not the cure for global warming, food shortages, massive refugee movements, fuel shortages and the perpetual impoverishment of most of the world’s people. The goal of capital economies, market economies, is accumulation and concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a very few; impoverishing the many and raping the natural world. Capital economies install the vast human population as consumers while limiting the number of producers in massive corporate conglomerations. The basic assumption and necessity of capital economies is that nature’s wealth is a commodity essentially free for the taking and that human labor is a commodity that must be kept at a minimum. The constant emphasis on capital growth assumes endless natural wealth and human labor. This is a fundamental error in thinking. Nature has limits and human labor cannot long sustain abuse.

Modern subsistence economics, based on the concept of life renewal and natural balance is now essential as a corrective for more than four hundred years of intensified capital growth and consumption. Economies centered on subsistence where human need is balanced against the capacity of the natural world to reproduce can reverse global warming and stabilize global climate. Subsistence affirms life as the central concern of human economic activity while ensuring that more of human societies become producers and consumers of their own produce. The goal of modern subsistence economics is the replenishment of life and respectful use of the natural world. Subsistence economics is deeply embedded in the cultures of Fourth World peoples throughout the world. (For a thorough and insightful discussion of the subsistence perspective read Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen in their excellent book “The Subsistence Perspective,” Zed Books: London. Professor Mies emphasizes that her book along with Claudia von Werlhof and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen discusses the “subsistence perspective” and not an economic model. Mies argues that the subsistence perspectives emphasizes the economy and society, culture, history and all other aspects of life. While I agree with this analysis, I suggest that economics is indeed about all aspects of life just as it is true that culture is about all aspects of life.)

Many Fourth World nations, like the states governments of India, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and others have turned their backs on their own culture, their own knowledge, to become acquisitive societies. These nations have joined in the headlong rush to consume the natural world in excessive ways. They have become contributors to global warming, food shortages, and all the rest. These indigenous peoples believe they have long been denied the “fruits of progress,” and have waited too long to become consumers like metropolitan populations. These nations are making the same mistake as the consumer, commodified populations. These Fourth World economies are showing the same signs of widening gaps between rich and poor, sharply reduced natural wealth, and wild swings between enrichment and impoverishment.

US President Bill Clinton proclaimed in the early 1990s “It’s the economy stupid” to call attention to a political point of emphasis in that electoral campaign. The phrase is now the point to understand why climate change, fuel shortages, food riots, desertification and deforestation are a product of the capital economy Mr. Clinton then lauded. Capital economics assumes perpetual growth and consequently perpetual consumption. It is argued that the capital based economy and environmental balance can go hand in hand by generating “green jobs” and “green technology.” The problem with this thinking is that it essentially no different from the constant growth and consumption emphasis of straight capital economics. Technology is supposed to save the environment and prosper the population. There is no evidence that such an approach has any legs.

On the other hand, there is powerful evidence supporting the notion that subsistence economics is the appropriate alternative that can reverse the sins of the last 400 years. Now it is up to Fourth World nations that still have confidence in their own cultures to persuade modern states like the United States, Germany, China and India that they must adopt the tried and true practices of modern subsistence economics. By so doing, President Morales’ urgent call for an alternative to the greed of capital economics that solves the problem of climate change, food shortage, fuel shortages and more will indeed be realized and Fourth World nations will resume their place in the global dialog for human life.

A fundamental shift must take place in the way human beings transact the distribution of goods and services. We must reclaim localism, and restore human productivity as well as human access to land. These are essential elements of the subsistence perspective and of these the most immediate change that must take place in the relationship between people and the land. Restore land to those who have become landless owing to state and corporate confiscations of land. People must have access to the land to produce food and life. Changing the economy in this fundamental way can restore the balance needed to reverse the calamities now confronting the world’s peoples.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: climate change, Evo Morales, subsistence, capital

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April 4, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

The United Nations has convened and scheduled numerous meetings to address remedies to reduce the effects of Global Warming and needed human adaptations in response to impending climate change. The latest of these meetings has just ended in Bangkok, Thailand under the name: Adhoc Working Group - Climate Change.

States’ governments are beginning to consider new laws, regulations and policies aimed at ensuring their prosperity even as they tentatively take steps to reduce the adverse effects of Global Warming.

While states’ governments act through their multi-lateral organizations and in their own legislatures Fourth World nations prepare to complain about the adverse affects of Global Warming at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues beginning April 21 in New York City. The United Nations Permanent Forum meets as a side bar while others make decisions that directly affect the health, wealth and security of Fourth World peoples. Meanwhile, Fourth World peoples remain on the sidelines complaining about the serious threats and adverse affects of global warming caused by the very industrialization that ravaged Fourth World territories throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Despite the fact that 80% of the world’s biodiversity remains located in Fourth World territories, states governments and multi-lateral organizations act as if there are no Fourth World peoples who must be active participants in the global dialog. Fourth World peoples are the key to green territories remaining in the world. Again, despite this fact, Fourth World peoples have remained sidelined either by choice, temperament or simple exclusion.

When the Biodiversity Convention of 1994 was negotiated the same thing happened. Instead of seating themselves in the negotiating hall Fourth World peoples met in a facility more than a kilometer from the assembly hall holding the state “deciders”. The result of that Convention has been the decision of states’ government to share in the benefits of Fourth World nations’ resources without the consent of those nations.

The Kyoto Protocols didn’t include discussions about or by Fourth World peoples and their territories, yet the conclusion was for states’ governments to benefit from the green Fourth World territories without the consent of Fourth World nations.

The Climate Change negotiations just ended in Bangkok, Thailand have set an ambitious agenda intended to lead up to a new international agreement on global warming. The agenda themes for new negotiations will focus on adaptation, mitigation, research & technology, finance and “a shared vision for long-term cooperative action.” Three more meetings are scheduled for 2008 and probably four more in 2009.

The Bangkok meeting importantly decided to include “forest-related activities as a major emphasis for carbon emissions reductions.”

Now the stage is set for the states’ governments….but, notice that Fourth World nations are no where to be seen even though their forests, their jungles, their oceans, and soils are the most important part of carbon emissions sequestration debate.

Fourth World nations have very hard choices to make not only in the face of climate change, but in the face of disenfranchisement at the hands of states’ governments. Fourth World nations must stop complaining and take action to demand seats at the negotiating table. Proactive initiatives are necessary. Asking for sympathy from the very states that reap benefits from Fourth World territories without the consent of nations has not worked and won’t work.

The very existence of more than 500 million Fourth World peoples depends on the nations taking the initiative to shape the dialog and the direction of global climate change negotiations. Failure to do so means that Fourth World nations will accept the confiscation of their lands, their resources and their way of life or an untimely end at the hands of industrial pollution produced by a greedy and ignorant commercial system. The hard choice now is to act proactively and vigorously. Complaining at the lower steps of the United Nations achieves nothing.

Copyright 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: climate change, Fourth World, global warming, negotiations

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March 17, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

The Peoples’ Republic of China aggressively conducts a policy toward Fourth World nations that can only be described as “genocidal.” China must be held accountable for its attacks on Tibetans seeking their independence from Chinese assimilation. China must be held accountable for its attacks on Uyghurs seeking an independent East Turkestan from Chinese assimilation. China must be held accountable for its provision of weapons and support to the Sudanese government attacks destroying in whole or in part the peoples of Dafur in western Sudan most of whom are living as refugees in eastern Chad. China must be held accountable for its use of petroleum in the delta region of Biafra southeast of Nigeria that destroys the life giving environment of the Ijaw, Ogoni, Ibbio and Igbo peoples. China has even threatened the thirteen tribes of Taiwan by demanding control over their territories.

China’s crony-capitalist mentality and policies hiding behind a one-party communist state are responsible for genocidal disasters that demand global sanctions. In Tibet, the Chinese government carries out the destruction of Tibet’s culture, Tibetan lives, and the ability of Tibetans to exist as a people by military means and an overwhelming transmigration program replacing Tibetans with Han Chinese. The recently opened railway from China to Tibet accelerates China’s deliberate efforts to destroy Tibet. The use of military attacks on Tibetans is clearly aimed at intimidating people into submission–not to mention the destruction of lives and property. China’s policy toward Tibet can only be described as the total destruction of Tibetan peoples, their culture and way of life–to commit genocide against the Tibetans.

My readers can help hold China accountable by logging on to FreeTibet. Do it NOW! Support the Tibetan Government NOW by logging.

You can hold China accountable by logging on to the East Turkistan Information Center and becoming informed about how the Uyghur people are defending against China’s assimilationist policies.

You can hold China accountable in Darfur and Biafra, Tibet and East Turkestan by contacting the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights demanding that the Commission on Human Rights condemn the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China for it aggressive policy of genocide! Demand that your government “Sanction China” for its genocidal policies.

When countries get a “pass” despite their blatant policy of genocide all of humanity is in danger. China is committing genocide. Athletes planning to participate in the China sponsored Olympics must “Sanction China” by withdrawing from participating in the Olympics. Ordinary citizens can “Sanction China” by boycotting products made in China…just read the lable and buy something else. Support with your money, your political will and your emails each of the peoples now under attack by China.

It is time that practitioners of Genocide suffer punishment. Once it was said, “Never Again.” Indeed governments have become the main practitioners of Genocide. Genocide is indeed being practiced with impunity. The people the world over must draw the line now and demand…no force…the issue…Genocide, Never Again!

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: China, Tibet, Uyghur, Biafra, Darfur

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February 2, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Kenya is aflame with internecine tribal warfare. Sudan is split between the Arab controlled government, the Dinka, Fur, Nuba, and Nubian peoples. Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Congo, and Chad have been equally faced with violence and warfare. Namibia battles separatist tribes in the northeast, and Zimbabwe’s government promotes division and violence against Zimbabwe’s various peoples. Nigeria violently attacks and imprisons advocates of the Republic of Biafra lead by Igbo, Ijaw, and Ogoni nations.

Violence between indigenous nations in Africa’s states boils with vengeance. At the core of all of these conflicts are three major irritants: corrupt control over the state apparatus, uneven distribution of natural resource wealth and denial of access to land.

Most African states were officially decolonized in the 1960s and afterward. European colonial domination was replaced by neocolonialism and black African recolonization where corrupt tribal leaders, corporations and other financial interests maintained a grasp on natural resources (land, diamonds, oil, minerals, precious wood), made newly empowered African state leaders into corrupt puppets and impoverished millions of indigenous African nations. State boundaries were imposed on populations by those who thought the state system was good for Europe and would be good for Africa–they weren’t and aren’t. Whole peoples have been prevented from accessing their traditional territories and lands necessary for the the production of food and natural wealth.

Europe’s state system in Africa has fundamentally failed to benefit Africa’s hundreds of different nations. Corruption, the use of state force against differing nations inside the boundaries of a state, denial of access to life supporting land and denial of shared wealth are all symptomatic of failed African states. The states have been bankrupted while individual families and dominating tribes have been enriched.  The state system has failed!

Corporations have battered African natural resources by plundering raw materials and undermine social and cultural stability of tribal peoples through de facto slave trading. Single sources of wealth have contributed to impoverishment of whole peoples and enrichment of a few. The few control access to the natural resources and businesses deal only with them to gain access.  This imbalance reflects the blind profit motive that fails to recognize the social, cultural and economic imbalances caused by outside economic demands for energy, minerals, wood and even animal parts like ivory tusks from elephants and  the hands and feet of gorillas.

European-based land tenure systems have disenfranchised whole peoples and removed them from access to life-giving lands. The wealthy and the powerful control the best lands while nations starve. Lands that produce food are used to produce exports to other countries resulting in the enrichment of those who control the land.

Kenya is inflamed by the reality of corrupt states’ governments, the failure of fair natural wealth distribution and denial of land access. Kenya is only the most visible of festering violence being done in Africa.

How to remedy the current violence?  There is no way to stop the violence now. States will be broken up, violence will be done to businesses that steal raw materials (like Shell Oil experiences in the Delta Region of Nigeria), and land will be reclaimed through violence. The original nations of Africa cannot and will not be denied as the violence, the famine, the disease and hatreds gripping unstable and bankrupt states foretells. The state system will be replaced with something more appropriate to the history and realities of the African continent.

Africa’s indigenous nations have been too long denied their place in their own countries.  They have been denied the benefits of enormous natural wealth and life giving land and water.  Africa is not a poor place. It is a corrupted place that needs cleaning out.  The corrupt and bankrupt neocolonialism and black tribal recolonization must be replaced and apparently Africa’s original nations are now, however, chaotically, moving to reclaim their destiny.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: kenya, Africa, corruption, recolonization, violence in Africa, wars

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January 21, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Biofuel production is supposed to be the panacea for skyrocketing petroleum costs. Environmentalists argue that biofuels reduce carbon emissions and reduce dependency on petroleum-based fuels. Industry leaders argue biofuels are good for the economy. Both are wrong. Biofuels increase carbon emissions problems by increasing the destruction of jungles and forests. Biofuels like soybean and palm oil increase food oil prices.

Palm oil and soybean oil are two important sources of calories for peoples living in Asia, Melanesia and parts of the Middle East. Competing demands for these oils have suddenly exploded as Palm oil produced mainly in Indonesia is refined for use to power automobiles. Growers are clearing more jungles to plant palm trees to meet increased energy demands thus contributing to carbon emissions and increased prices for foods and cooking oil too.

Industry is essentially shifting valuable foodstuffs to the energy market taking nutrition from those who need it most.

If there was ever evidence that saving the environment and developing the economy at the same time is simply nonsense the competing demands between human food verses energy for machines certainly dashes the hopeful notions behind sustainable development. Biofuels, if they are to be produced, must not detract from human biological need. Reducing carbon emissions, improving human health and energy consumption command us to become more realistic. We must, in post-industrial states, accept the necessity to “use less” and not more. States like China, Brazil, Indonesia and India should stop repeating the failed experience of post industrial states like the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and others. Nineteenth century industrialization must be stopped and replaced by a combination of modernized traditional food production, housing, social organization (smaller towns) and modern advanced technology.

Intercropping, for example, (that food planting method that involves companion planting and plant selection) produces 40% more food than row cropping commonly used now by agricultural sectors around the world. Intercropping uses little added energy in the form of fertilizer, machine technology, etc. Row cropping is extremely expensive and inefficient in terms of food production and distribution.

Land tenure systems will have to be substantially changed in countries around the world to distribute land to landless peoples and communities so they can produce much of their own food.  Self-sufficient communities should be the goal instead of forcing global standardized markets and interdependence.

Fourth World peoples throughout the world demonstrate the staying power of self-sustaining communities that produce much of their own food and use little energy. Choices between fuel and food are substantially reduced making human life more important than energy profits. Post-industrial and industrial peoples must now stop and think! Does it really make sense to grow and increase energy use and grow carbon emissions to eventually choke life on the planet?  Does it make sense to barrel ahead taking food from the poor and the poorest of the poor to fuel machines, electrify homes and manufacture consumer goods?

The choice between fuel and food is a false choice. We humans cannot survive constant growth.  We need new strategies to meet human needs. We need new strategies to meet the demands of the living earth.  There are strategies long tested by Fourth World societies that do not pollute, leave a small human imprint and promote a high quality of life.  We must pay attention to those strategies as lessons of human survival.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: carbon emissions, biofuels, food prices, alternate strategies

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January 11, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

US Senator Barack Obama is a student of political science, international relations and American law. He is a leading candidate for the presidency of the United States of America and he is the son of Barack Obama, Sr., of the Luo tribe in western Kenya. What will President Obama’s American Indian Policy be when he announces it in the Fall of 2009? What will President Obama’s policy be toward other Fourth World nations in the world…including those presently being shot and bombed in Iraq, Iran, Colombia, the Philippines and in Indonesia? In less than a year we will know how a Luo President of the United States handles nations in the Fourth World.

Senator Obama traveled with his wife Michelle and two daughters in 2006 to Kisumu, the port city of more than 300 thousand in Kenya on the eastern shores of Lake Alexandria to visit his father’s village to encourage AIDS prevention and to learn more about his family and the Luo tribe. Nyangoma Kogelo, Obama’s ancestral village, turned out to welcome the symbolic return of a native son. He has begun the task of rediscovering his Luo roots. He is coming to grips with a Fourth World reality that courses through his veins. He has a reality that may well serve all the people in the world to open mutual and beneficial communications of different peoples.

On President Obama’s list of Fourth World policies will be Climate Change and the significant role Fourth World nations must play in the negotiations of what will be called the Copenhagen Protocol.  Self-Government of Fourth World nations will be a prominent issue that not only concerns nations inside the  United States, but in Canada, Taiwan, subSaharan Africa, South America and of course Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine.

President Obama will need to tune his Fourth World antennas very soon. The agenda may overtake him. Since many of the major issues facing Mr. Obama are rooted in Fourth World nations like the Luo, he will have to act swiftly to become familiar with the complexities of Fourth World Geopolitics.

A Luo may well become the President of the United States.  He will have a special duty to the world to bring clarity and focus to US Indian Policy and its Fourth World policies elsewhere in the world. The world deserves a president who will recognize the powerful realities in small places that affect peace and security for us all.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Luo, US President

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January 7, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

The Financial Times, New York Times and BBC increasingly report stories about growing conflicts between Fourth World nations and powerful states like the United States, Britain and Russia. Reports that the United States military will expand its covert operations in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan, NATO’s war against Pashtun forces in Afghanistan, British interventions in Kenya to tamp down conflicts between angry tribal peoples upset over a stolen government election, American military forces surreptitiously in Nigeria’s oil rich Delta Region taking on Ijawa forces while Russia’s state owned Gasprom meets in Ajuba to offer money that will give Russia control over oil in Ijawa, Igbo and Ogoni territories speak loudly about how Fourth World nations are on the front-lines of violent conflicts.

Pakistan is a classic example of a state essentially defined by the presence of Fourth World nations where military forces from the United States threaten violent confrontations. The Pashtun in the so-called tribal areas are the target. But a US intervention will cause an explosion of nations that will make Afghanistan and Iraq look small. The Pashtun, Baluchis, Sindhis and Punjabis were patched together to form Pakistan…a mistake to be sure. These peoples required totally different political options than the formation of a single state.

Russia is making a similar mistake by attempting to grab oil reserves in Nigeria’s Igbo, Ogoni and Igawa south threatening to control a major resources and contribute to destabilization in Fourth World nations. Playing a oil money game in an already highly unstable environment promises to contribute to greater violence there by inserting yet another state into the conflict between Nigeria’s government and these nations.

The United States complains about its security as a rational for intervening in Pakistan and the Pashtun territories.  Russia greedily reaches for control over oil to block US, EU, Indian and Chinese oil interests…threatening further destabilization.

Confrontations between state governments and Fourth World nations isn’t new. Virtually every state with nations inside attempt to use centralized state control to manipulate Fourth World peoples…witness Kenya.  What is increasingly new is the intervention of external states in direct confrontations with Fourth World nations.  The United States government is in the lead of such outside interventions in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Colombia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq just to name a few. External interventions to directly confront Fourth World nations appears to be stimulating a major part of the US government military realignment suggesting that we will see more violent confrontations involving conventional military forces from the United States, Russia, China and India in Fourth World territories.

What are these violent confrontations increasingly about? Control over land and industrially precious resources like oil, diamonds, and minerals, inside Fourth World territories is the central issue. Fourth World nation’s seeking to freely determine their own political future is a secondary rational for violent attacks.  The “war on terror” is transmogrifying into widening violent confrontations between states and Fourth World nations.

This is not necessary, but the military budgets of powerful states fire the fever. The biggest military in the world–the United States–is foremost among violent forces aiming to confront Fourth World nations.  As I have suggested on numerous occasions before, states need a Fourth World policy aimed at peaceful relations and non-violent political transformation. Less military and more diplomacy is necessary. States need to train their diplomats to understand the Fourth World.  Fourth World nations need to train their diplomats and political leaders to more effectively deal with states’ governments.

Escalation of violence is not the answer, but I fear that those with the guns will not listen.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: Pakistan, military, Kenya, nations, states

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December 31, 2007 by Jay Taber.

I’m only half way through A Quiet Revolution by Mary Elizabeth King, but I can already say that her analysis of the first Palestinian intifada, as well as her detailed documentation of the use of nonviolent resistance by the indigenous residents of the annexed and occupied territories over the last century of conflict with the Zionists, is unequivocally the most useful discussion of strategic opposition that I have read in a long time. For Americans, unaccustomed to thinking in the intergenerational time frames usually necessary for achieving independence — not to mention the requisite investment in the social infrastructure of ideas — King’s contribution to comprehending the arts of community-based political science is a most welcome addition to our sadly thin pool of knowledge. I look forward to adding it to our list of classic texts on communication for change.

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December 31, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Virtually every Fourth World nation has experienced a form of climate change since the beginning of global colonization in the 11th century. It was then that Skanians (sometimes called Vikings) followed the westward currents in the north Atlantic to what became known as “new found land.” Changes brought on by colonizing populations in eastern Africa (Arabs), western India (Han Chinese), and the western and eastern coasts of the Western Hemisphere (English, Spanish, French, Dutch) slowly, but vigorously reduced the numbers of Fourth World peoples (disease) and changed the environment (introduced plants and agricultural practices). While Fourth World nations world wide “managed” lands, waters, jungles and forests through selective decisions, their “management” was and is in some parts of the world still aimed at balance between the needs and wants of the human beings and the capacity of nature to reproduce. An example of Fourth World knowledge needed to support human life is “inter-cropping,” a cultural process of selective interaction between humans and plant life and animal life that produces 40% more nutritious food than “row-cropping” introduced by European agriculturalists. “Inter-cropping” has the virtue of not requiring fertilizer, insecticides or herbicides while producing foods more nutritious that industrial agriculture.

The colonists, settlers and their descendants (or what I have come to describe as “eternal tourists” have continued to ravage the environment such that where ever the “eternal tourists” reside they denude the earth. They take what was green and produce what is brown or no longer life producing. Since the end of World War II the idea of “development” has accelerated the process of denuding the earth and fouling the air, waters and the land. The greedy presumption of “development” is that all living things (plants, animals, soils, water, air, etc) are “free for the taking.” This attitude naturally flows from the experience of the “eternal tourist.” A tourist “uses” and does not produce anything. The earth’s bounty, as it is described, clearly costs a great deal as evidence for global warming is beginning to demonstrate. Cutting forests to the ground, dumping waste into rivers, and spewing carbon dioxide along with other greenhouse gases into the air are directly responsible for the very serious challenge that is now coming to a head: major changes in the climate, water levels and food productivity.

Fourth World nations that remain faithful to dynamically and evolving cultures reside in regions of the world that are “green.” To the extent that these nations have prevented occupation by the “eternal tourist” they have managed to continue life in their lands.

The United Nations Development Program asserts that 80% of the world’s last remaining biodiversity is located in Fourth World territories. The connection between human cultures and living green regions in the world is stunning, but essential for all human beings to understand. Fourth World peoples are essential to the continuation of living environments in the world.

With the debate over Climate Change now opening following the Bali, Indonesia session in early December and continuing for the next five years (culminating in Copenhagen, Denmark) it is important that Fourth World nations sit with the world’s state government decision-makers, non-governmental organizations, corporations and others to produce a credible Copenhagen Protocol on Climate Change. Fourth World nations must now step up to the table and demand a place there next to other decision-makers.

The Kyoto Protocol failed to recognize the significant part Fourth World nations play in the health of the world’s environments. No nation was invited to contribute to the dialog. The consequence was that from 1998 to 2012 states’ governments could confiscate with impunity Fourth World territories as if these living regions were truly part of the debate. Only Fourth World nations can make decisions in relation to their territories. Sovereignty over these territories must be in each Fourth World nation. States’ governments are makers of the problem we call Climate Change. Fourth World nations have solutions to what is an old problem if they will be heard.

Fourth World nations must now become a part of the global dialog. Without their participation as active decision-makers, the Copenhagen Protocol on Climate Change will fail. All of humanity will suffer.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, global warming, environment, kyoto, copenhagen

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