I am a descendent of the Mdewakanton Oyate, the Dakota people in Minnesota, and an enrolled member of the Sicangu Oyate in South Dakota. My lifework has emerged from weaving together my cultural identity, my writing, and my work in food sovereignty, helping to reclaim and protect our Indigenous seeds and food traditions.
My mother was Lakota, enrolled on the Rosebud reservation, but her experience in boarding school disconnected her from her community. I grew up focusing instead on early social justice issues with the environment.
In April 1970, before there was an Environmental Protection Agency, or a Clean Air Act, or a Clean Water Act, the first Earth Day was created to spark what would become a national environmental movement. As a sophomore in high school, I celebrated this first-ever event with a group of teenagers assigned to pick up trash alongside the road. For many of us, this occasion was another opportunity to protest the gas-guzzling, war mongering, materialistic, misogynistic, racist society that we were part of. Protecting the environment seemed like an extension of many parallel movements to challenge social injustice, including the American Indian Movement, civil rights, and protests against the Vietnam War.
In college, I began working for the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, my dream job working to change the world. I researched and lobbied against the use of hydrofluorocarbons, and met my hero, Ralph Nader. I believed, as did many of my generation, that we had the passion and commitment to create a more just and equitable world while protecting the environment.
Through my early work as a writer, I explored issues of cultural identity, assimilation and historical trauma. I encountered a profound turning point in 2000, when I first heard of the old, rare, tribal seeds that were being grown out in Farmington by a tiny, bare-bones Native program called Dream of Wild Health. As both a writer and a gardener, this was the moment in which my passion for cultural recovery and environmental work came together.
On a ½ acre garden, they were growing Cherokee Trail of Tears corn that was descended from the original removal of the Cherokee people, Hopi black turtle beans, and traditional tobacco that was said to be hundreds of years old. These seeds carried stories of the land, the seasons that had formed them, the hands that planted them, as well as the turbulent histories of the people who protected them over many generations. For some of these seeds, there were only a handful remaining.
When I was hired by Dream of Wild Health in 2008, I was blessed to work with Native elders, farmers, youth and their families, and the seeds themselves, relearning an Indigenous relationship with the land that was intrinsic to my identity as a Dakota/Lakota person. Being a good relative to all living beings is one of the most important teachings for Dakota people. We say, Mitakuye Owasin, We Are All Related, as a way of claiming kinship with our seeds, water, land, plants and animals, that is rooted in reciprocity, or caring for each other. Indigenous peoples of the Americas developed 3/5 of the world’s foods that we rely on today, establishing the original organic, local, and sustainable food systems.
I also learned the hard history around our Indigenous seeds and foods, and the ways in which they have been used to coerce Native people. Arapaho elder, Ernie Whiteman, once said to me, “If you can control the food, you can control the people.” In the late 1800s and early 1900s, tribes were forced onto reservations where they lost access to their traditional foods from hunting and gathering, and became dependent instead on commodity foods that were high in starch and fat. This had a profound cultural impact as well. The ceremonies and prayers that were part of planting and harvesting were not needed when food came in sacks and cans.
In place of traditional gardens and foodways came a new relationship with the land that treated plants and animals as commodities. This new agricultural system relied on intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides and introduced genetically modified seeds, seemingly without regard for the long term health of our soil, water and food. How our food is grown is intimately connected to the environmental issues we face, contributing to our current climate crisis. And yet despite the marketing claims that an industrialized food system is needed in order to feed the world, an estimated 10% of our global population is now hungry, many of them children. The same is true for the United States, while diet-related diseases are reaching epidemic levels that disproportionately affect low-income communities of color.
Through my writing and education work, as well as participation at COP28, I am committed to helping restore our relationship with the earth that recognizes how we are all connected down to the smallest bacteria. Rebuilding sovereign food systems that are framed with principles of justice and equity will help heal the health of our communities as well as the earth. When seeds are planted with prayers and songs, tended with love, and shared with our community, then our food once again becomes our medicine.
Portions of this story were adapted from an essay, Seeds for Seven Generations, that was first published in the anthology, “A Good Time for the Truth.”
Diane Wilson is a Dakota writer, educator, and bog steward, who has published four award-winning books as well as numerous essays. Her novel, The Seed Keeper, received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, and her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. She has also published a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, a middle-grade biography, Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, and co-authored a picture book—Where We Come From. Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendant, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation. She is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.
Diane is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
The post Reclaiming Food as Medicine appeared first on Climate Generation.
A growing group of countries wants COP30 to kick off the process of crafting a roadmap for the world to transition away from fossil fuels, which are by far the largest driver of planetary heating.
More than 80 countries on Tuesday issued a call for the “Mutirão” decision – expected to be the main political outcome of the Belém summit – to include a commitment to develop a blueprint that builds on the landmark COP28 agreement in Dubai, which for the first time signalled a global shift away from oil, coal and gas.
The call’s supporters include industrialised nations like the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as large developing countries such as Colombia and Kenya, and low-lying Pacific island states.
“This is a global coalition with Global North and Global South countries coming together and saying with one voice: this is an issue which cannot be swept under the carpet,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told a press conference on Tuesday. “We have an opportunity to make COP30 the moment we take forward what we agreed at COP28,” he added.
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Countries must confront fossil fuels head-on in their NDCs
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Since all governments agreed for the first time at the UN climate conference in Dubai to explicitly reference fossil fuels in an official climate summit outcome, major fossil fuel-producing countries – led vocally by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia – have pushed back against efforts to build on that landmark decision.
But calls for the creation of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels have been gathering momentum in Belém since Brazilian President Lula da Silva mentioned the idea at the leaders’ summit nearly two weeks ago.
“Key for 1.5C”
Rapid developments over the past ten days in the Amazon city have caught many countries off guard. The European Union has yet to form a joint position on the roadmap, for instance, even though the bloc supports the implementation of the Dubai agreement.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the low-lying Marshall Islands, said a global shift away from fossil fuels is “key for keeping the door open on 1.5C and limiting the scale and duration of any overshoot”. UN Secretary General António Guterres conceded last month that the global average temperature will breach, at least temporarily, the key threshold set in the Paris Agreement.
Stege added that the current reference to a fossil fuel roadmap in the draft outcome decision presented by Brazil’s COP presidency on Tuesday morning was “weak and presented as an option”, while “it must be strengthened and it must be adopted”.
COP30 Bulletin Day 8: Draft decision draws battle lines on fossil fuel transition, finance and trade
The draft “Mutirão” decision – which the COP30 hosts hope to land by the end of Wednesday – mentions the transition away from fossil fuels among a wide sweep of options for how to find agreement on the thorniest issues being discussed in Belém.
One option would encourage governments to convene a roundtable aimed at supporting countries to develop “just, orderly and equitable transition roadmaps”, including for reducing dependency on fuels and stopping deforestation. However, that appears to refer to domestic blueprints and stops short of advocating for a global roadmap that over 80 countries are calling for.
Backlash expected from oil producers
Irene Vélez, Colombia’s Environment Minister, said such a roadmap “must be the legacy of COP30”.
“I wish that we won’t have to tell the world that the dozens of countries that are here have let them down – not only to those who mobilised today but to future generations,” she added. “We must rise to the occasion”.
Antonio Hill, a COP veteran from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), told Climate Home it is not surprising that strong calls for a fossil fuel transition blueprint are coming from Brazil and Colombia.
“They are relatively high-cost producers [of oil and gas], they have relatively short horizons in terms of their reserves, and they’re facing structural decline,” he added. “They actually don’t have the luxury of waiting it out.”
But their push for the inclusion of a fossil fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome is all but guaranteed to prompt a strong backlash from several other large nations heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports and consumption.
Petrostates within the Arab group, led by Saudi Arabia, are expected to mount the strongest opposition. And while renewable energy-rich Kenya has endorsed Tuesday’s call, many other African countries remain wary of committing to a fossil-fuel phase-out.
Fair and funded transition
Richard Muyungi, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), told Climate Home News last Friday that African countries had yet to coordinate their views on the issue, which he described as “very important”.
“But… generally as a continent, we are the least responsible for the [climate] problem, and this is the continent which chooses to harness all the available energy sources to develop,” he said, adding that Africa should not be forced or pushed towards a trajectory that threatens to undermine its development agenda.
Former German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said countries pushing for a roadmap need to reassure their counterparts that this will not be a “top-down” exercise.
“We are talking about a nationally-driven, fair and inclusive process that would also bring in the finance [element],” she told Climate Home News. “For big fossil fuel producers, it is an opportunity to have a dialogue with consumers so that it can be just, orderly and equitable.”
The post Pressure builds for fossil fuel transition plan at COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
COP30 Bulletin Day 8: Draft decision draws battle lines on fossil fuel transition, finance and trade
Hopeful that countries can agree on a Belém “political package” by tomorrow when President Lula comes to town, Brazil’s COP30 presidency has drawn up the first draft of a text intended to form the backbone of a deal.
The “Mutirão” decision – which the summit’s hosts insist is not a cover text – delves into the four big issues that, although not formally on the agenda, have dominated the discussions in the humid Amazon city: emissions-cutting ambition, country’s climate plans, finance and trade.
The draft contains a menu of options reflecting a wide range of positions on the thorniest issues at stake, exposing the divisions between governments and the strong diplomatic push still needed to get an agreement over the line.
David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, said each bundle of options on the key topics contains both stronger and weaker elements, and countries now face a clear choice. They can get behind “the stronger elements and really reinforce the more ambitious potential outcomes or move in a weaker direction and water down what they come away with from Belém,” he added.
Mutirão decision for COP30 seen weak on fossil fuel roadmap
On efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a decision could encourage countries to build on the landmark COP28 agreement and convene a roundtable aimed at supporting countries to develop “just, orderly and equitable transition roadmaps”, including on reducing dependency on fuels and stopping deforestation. That appears to refer to domestic blueprints and stops short of advocating for a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels which more than 80 countries are now calling for.
A second option, which analysts described as weaker, only invites countries to share opportunities and “success stories” on the transition towards “low carbon solutions”. There is a third option for no text.
The transition away from fossil fuels gets another mention in the section on how to respond to a shortfall in ambition in countries’ new national climate plans (NDCs) submitted this year.
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The first option would see the creation of an annual forum to consider the UN’s official review of emission-cutting targets, known as a “synthesis report”, with the goal of “accelerating action” around the three energy-related outcomes agreed at COP28 in Dubai: tripling renewable energy capacity, doubling energy efficiency and transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems. All of those objectives are currently lagging behind.
Another option in the draft Mutirão” decision would instead see the establishment of a “Global Implementation Accelerator”, a voluntary initiative overseen by this year’s and next year’s COP presidencies to accelerate the implementation of commitments and support countries in turning NDC promises into action.
Under a third option, the COP30 and COP31 presidencies would coordinate the creation of a “Belem Roadmap to 1.5”, identifying ways to put the world back on track towards reaching the most ambitious temperature goal of the Paris Accord – which the UN has conceded will inevitably be breached, at least temporarily. The presidencies would produce a report summarising their work by COP31 next November.
Cosima Cassel, programme lead at UK think-tank E3G, said the current options should not be mutually exclusive and a strong outcome would include a combination of an annual stocktake on filling the ambition gap and a roadmap to wean the world off fossil fuels.
“For that to happen, the presidency will need to work hard to ensure the finance and adaptation package is robust enough to support enhanced NDCs,” she added.
Finance remains wide open, adaptation in focus
On adaptation finance, the draft text includes a proposal to triple the support provided by wealthy nations to help developing countries strengthen their resilience to climate impacts.
The language could be interpreted in two ways: either as a new standalone target of delivering an additional $120 billion per year by 2030, as proposed by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, or as a sub-target within the broader £300 billion annual climate-finance goal agreed last year – something likely to be more acceptable to developed countries with shrinking aid budgets.
There is also a weaker option that only goes as far as acknowledging the need to “dramatically scale up adaptation finance” and provide public and grant-based resources that do not come with strings attached or costly repayments.
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On wider finance issues, the document features a sweep of options. There is the possibility of creating a three-year work programme and “legally-binding plan” on the implementation of Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, which requires rich nations to stump up cash for climate action in the developing world. That is something most developing countries have been calling for, but is highly unlikely to fly with industrialised nations.
Another option would see countries draw up four different roadmaps, including one aimed at building on the recommendations in the recently published Baku to Belém Roadmap, which charted a path to mobilise $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance for developing countries by 2035.
There is also an option for no text on finance.
Finding ways to talk about trade and climate
Proposals to tackle concerns over trade also feature prominently for the first time in a draft COP decision, after emerging economies like China and India led a pushback against climate-related mechanisms like the EU’s carbon border adjustment.
Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the final deal would need to include both a political message calling for an “open, free and fair” trading environment and the definition of a process with next steps to achieve that.
The draft includes a variety of options on both fronts. On the implementation front, the text suggests that the COP30 and COP31 presidencies could organise workshops examining the links between trade and climate. It also raises the option of launching a new dialogue or platform at next year’s mid-year session in Bonn and at COP31 to further discuss trade-related issues.
Another alternative is for a UN summit and an annual dialogue “on the importance of an open and supportive international economic system in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication”.
Li added that trade is expected to be one of the “pillar stones” of the COP30 outcome, but discussions are still very “open-ended” at this stage, and a lot more work needs to be done to find compromises over the coming days.
COP31 – Australia bid losing steam?
After a year-long standoff between Turkey and Australia bidding for the hosting rights for next year’s COP31, Aussie prime minister Anthony Albanese showed the first signs of backing down today, saying that a stalemate would “not send a good signal”.
Speaking at an event in Perth, Albanese said “if Turkey is chosen, we wouldn’t seek to veto that”, The Guardian reported.
COP’s host rotates every year by region, with next year belonging to the group of “West Europe and Others” – which includes Australia and Turkey. If no agreement is reached by the group, the conference would be held in Bonn, at UN Climate Change headquarters, under the standing Brazilian presidency.
Albanese said defaulting the venue to Bonn would send the wrong signal “about the unity that’s needed for the world to act on climate”. Environment minister Chris Bowen has said he wants to bring world leaders to Adelaide, in collaboration with Pacific countries.
A majority of voting countries in the group are supporting Australia’s bid, but Turkey has not withdrawn its bid with just a few days left until the end of COP30 – the deadline for choosing the next host city. COP32’s host, on the other hand, was settled last week, with Ethiopia winning the bid to host the 2027 conference in its capital Addis Ababa.
Pope keeps faith in 1.5C
The United Nations may have accepted that overshooting 1.5C of warming – at least temporarily – is inevitable – but God’s representative on Earth didn’t get the memo.
The new pope, Leo XIV, sent a video message to cardinals from the Global South gathered at the Amazonian Museum in Belém on Monday evening, saying “there is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C” although, he warned, “the window is closing.”
“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift he entrusted to us,” he said, reading from a sheet of paper in front of a portrait of the Vatican.
And he defended the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, saying it has ”driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet.” “It is not the Agreement that is failing – we are failing in our response,” he said. In particular, the American Pope pointed to “the political will of some.”
“We walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed. We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils. Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation,” he emphasised.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed the message, adding that the Pope’s words “challenge us to keep choosing hope and action, honouring our shared humanity and standing with communities all around the world already crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat”.
War’s carbon footprint grows but stays off the books
During the Leaders’ Summit that happened just before COP, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva referred to ongoing conflicts around the world, saying that “spending twice as much on weapons as we do on climate action is paving the way for climate apocalypse”. “There will be no energy security in a world at war,” he added.
But COP30’s schedule doesn’t appear to reflect his concerns, as there’s no mention of any peace initiative on the official schedule and no thematic day for peace, a marked difference from COP28 and COP29, when Baku called for a global truce for the summit’s duration. It didn’t produce the desired result.
And yet discussions about militarism and what it is costing the planet have not been absent from the COP30 halls. The first week saw the publication of ‘Accounting for the uncounted: The global climate impact of military activities’, an analysis by a group of civil society organisations and the University of Warwick that showed how global armed forces produce 5.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
If counted as a country, they would be the fourth-biggest emitter, topped only by the US, China and India – and producing more emissions than the continent of Africa.
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
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Ellie Kinney, senior climate advocacy officer with the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), one of the organisations behind the report, explained that, while the Paris Agreement made military emissions reporting voluntary, few countries fully comply.
China and the US, the world’s two biggest military spenders, have ceased their partial reporting on them altogether: the US has not sent its annual report to UNFCCC this year, and China said its military emissions are “not occurring”.
Yet the research findings are alarming: the Russia-Ukraine conflict has produced 237 million tonnes of CO₂ over three years, while the Gaza conflict has already surpassed the combined annual emissions of Costa Rica and Estonia. The Afghanistan war was responsible for a staggering 400 million tonnes CO₂, and the EU’s rearmament could lock in 200 million tonnes of CO₂ mainly through the production and transportation of weapons, an activity that uses steel and aluminium, which are very carbon-intensive to produce.
Ana Toni, COP30’s CEO, said back in March that countries that increase their military budgets should also increase their climate spending or face more wars in the future. “Wars come and go. Unfortunately, climate change is there for a long time,” she added.
The European Parliament used its annual COP resolution this year to call on the defence sector to help tackle climate change by cutting its emissions intensity and urged EU decision-makers to formulate a proposal to increase the transparency of military emissions accounting to the UNFCCC.
Campaigners want military emissions reporting to be mandatory, especially after 2024 – the first calendar year to surpass the 1.5C temperature goal and, with 56 wars involving 92 nations, the year with the highest number of active conflicts since WWII.
“We can’t have this future where defence comes at the cost of climate action,” Kinney of CEOBS said. “Military security is not the only security – climate action is part of our collective security, too.”
The post COP30 Bulletin Day 8: Draft decision draws battle lines on fossil fuel transition, finance and trade appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 Bulletin Day 8: Draft decision draws battle lines on fossil fuel transition, finance and trade
The United Nations may have accepted that overshooting 1.5C of warming – at least temporarily – is inevitable – but God’s representative on Earth didn’t get the memo.
The new pope, Leo XIV, sent a video message to cardinals from the Global South gathered at the Amazonian Museum in Belém last night, saying “there is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C” although, he warned, “the window is closing.”
“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift he entrusted to us,” he said, reading from a sheet of paper in front of a portrait of the Vatican.
And he defended the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, saying it has ”driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet.” “It is not the Agreement that is failing – we are failing in our response,” he said In particular, the American Pope pointed to“the political will of some.”
“We walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed. We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils. Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation,” he emphasised.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed the message, adding that the Pope’s words “challenge us to keep choosing hope and action, honouring our shared humanity and standing with communities all around the world already crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat”.
The post COP Bulletin Day 8: Pope keeps faith in 1.5C appeared first on Climate Home News.
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