This Earth Day, Biden Must Center Indigenous Voices to Live Up to Climate Promises
By Julia Jeanty and Jade Begay
Today is the 52nd Earth Day, and many are taking the opportunity to celebrate and reconnect with nature while raising awareness for the urgent need to protect our planet. President Joe Biden took office promising to re-establish the U.S. as a global leader in the fight against climate change in a bid to conserve our Earth’s vital resources. In appointing Deb Haaland — the nation’s first Indigenous Secretary of the Interior — and Wahleah Johns as Director of the Department of Energy Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, President Biden signaled his commitment to fulfill that promise by empowering Indigenous voices. Haaland’s nomination demonstrated an understanding of the simultaneous and urgent needs to reunite Indigenous communities with their native lands and follow Indigenous leadership on environmental stewardship in order to meet our climate and conservation goals. Even now, with Indigenous communities making up only 5 percent of the global population, lands under their management account for 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity.
The White House has highlighted the importance of Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) in multiple fora, but as Biden navigates his second year in office, which is rife with many challenges including inflation and a global energy crisis, he must do more to reaffirm his commitment to both protecting Indigenous people and combating climate change. Recent research by Data for Progress finds that prioritizing Indigenous-Led Conservation (ILC) practices — conservation efforts that are designed and executed under the management of Indigenous leaders — is our best chance to meet our climate goals in an equitable and sustainable way.
Presently, Biden’s conservation agenda includes a policy known as the 30x30 strategy — an effort to conserve 30 percent of our nation’s land and waters by 2030 while supporting locally-led conservation and land management efforts. The 30x30 initiative will protect wildlife habitats and biodiversity and maintain greenhouse gas sinks like forests and wetlands. Notably, the initiative has support from 72 percent of voters, including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.
However, to maximize the potential of this plan, Biden must center and invest in Indigenous voices and solutions. Data for Progress’ policy memo offers clear recommendations for how to do just that, including calling on the Biden administration to: Establish a federal task force on ILC to carry out the 30x30 initiative’s ambitions; bolster workforce training opportunities for Indigneous groups through the Civilian Climate Corps; establish and maintain land tenure rights for Indigenous communities; and conserve critical habitats and preserve sacred Indigenous lands. The Justice40 initiative is a viable avenue for engaging Tribal leadership — both in regards to ILC and beyond — and the White House must not overlook this opportunity. With an abundance of public support and political capital already in place, prioritizing ILC practices can help the Biden administration deliver a big win on climate.
Aspects of the ILC philosophy are already popular with voters across political ideologies. For instance, the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA) would redirect $1.3 billion of existing revenue annually to state-led and $97.5 million to Tribal-led wildlife conservation efforts. Recent polling by Data For Progress and the National Wildlife Federation finds that voters support RAWA by a +76-point margin. The bill enjoys near-unanimous support among Democrats (93 percent support), Independents (82 percent), and Republicans (77 percent). In a time of heightened political polarization, conservation emerges through the noise as an issue with real bipartisan consensus.
In addition, we can look to successful ILC-driven projects taking place domestically and abroad to understand what implementation would look like. In Oakland, The Sogorea Te Land Trust, a women-led, intertribal initiative, operates three major projects that promote cultural revitalization and land restoration. These include a community garden, community farm, and the Lisjan traditional village, which recycles and reuses over 5,500 gallons of potable water via a rain catchment system, preventing flooding, erosion, and runoff. In Alaska, The Native Conservancy — the U.S.’ first Native-owned and Native-led land trust — has funded a program to increase Indigenous kelp farming. Kelp is a traditional food for Indigenous communities in the region, and in addition to being nutritionally-dense, kelp is grown in the ocean, thus allowing it to support marine ecosystem restoration while reducing land and freshwater use pressures. The Native Conservancy is seeking to alleviate some barriers to market entry for the tribes seeking to sell the kelp that they are harvesting by providing low-interest, long-term deferred loans to Indigenous farmers. This effort exemplifies how tribal efforts around land and water management can serve as potential sources of discretionary funding for tribes while increasing food sovereignty and providing regenerative ecosystem service.
Meanwhile, in Canada, the federally-supported Indigenous Guardians program includes monitoring and researching climate issues and implementing Indigenous conservation and land management practices in these efforts. Additionally, Australia’s Northern Territory Aboriginal Ranger Grant Program has distributed approximately $11.4 million to support the efforts of roughly 1,000 Aboriginal rangers since 2017. These programs exemplify the countless benefits of synergizing Indigenous knowledge with conventional conservation practices, reestablishing Indigenous land tenure, bolstering youth engagement and workforce training, and upholding cultural preservation for Indigenous communities.
The time is ripe for a forward-thinking, inclusive model for conservation and land management that centers Indigenous communities, expertise, and needs. Previous policies served a system of violence and colonization and have unsurprisingly proven inadequate at meeting the urgent crises of the 21st century. In order to heal and protect the land and our interdependent relationship with it, those old paradigms must be dismantled and rebuilt by the voices who should have been included from the very start. By turning these lessons learned into tangible policy solutions that bolster ILC, this Earth Day, the Biden administration can make good on its promises to protect America’s lands and waters in a just and equitable way.
Jade Begay, Climate Justice Campaign Director, is Diné and Tesuque Pueblo of New Mexico. Begay leads NDN Collective’s climate justice campaign work and brings extensive experience working in climate justice movement spaces throughout Turtle Island and within Indigenous communities across the globe.
Julia Jeanty is the Policy Manager at Data for Progress, where she oversees Data for Progress’s policy portfolio — developing original policy analysis and representing DFP’s work in policy working groups and beyond.