Indigenous women across Canada are emerging as powerful leaders in climate resilience and adaptation efforts. Drawing on traditional knowledge, community connections, and a deep commitment to environmental stewardship, Indigenous women are spearheading innovative methodologies to address climate change impacts in their communities and beyond.
Rematriation, Traditional Roles and Modern Leadership
The restoration of Indigenous women’s traditional roles through rematriation represents a powerful force in environmental leadership and climate action. This movement recognizes and reinstates women’s sacred responsibilities as water protectors and land guardians, roles deeply embedded in many Indigenous cultures’ traditional governance systems.
Indigenous women’s leadership emerges from matriarchal traditions where women held significant decision-making power in environmental stewardship. These traditional governance models recognized women’s unique relationship with water as life-givers and their profound understanding of environmental cycles and relationships. Today, this traditional authority finds new expression in climate action and environmental protection.
The rematriation of environmental leadership manifests through the restoration of women’s traditional decision-making roles and sacred responsibilities to water and land. This process involves revitalizing matriarchal governance systems that have historically guided sustainable resource management. Women’s ecological knowledge, passed down through generations, provides crucial insights for addressing current environmental challenges. The integration of traditional female leadership models emphasizes the importance of intergenerational knowledge transfer and cultural continuity while celebrating women’s environmental wisdom.
This rematriated approach brings a distinctive perspective to environmental stewardship, characterized by a holistic understanding of ecological relationships and long-term, intergenerational thinking. Women leaders demonstrate the essential balance between development and protection, integrating cultural and spiritual values into environmental decision-making. Their approach emphasizes collective well-being and recognizes the sacred nature of water, understanding the profound connections between environmental and community health.
Through rematriation, Indigenous women are leading climate action initiatives that combine traditional knowledge with contemporary environmental challenges. Their leadership in sustainable resource management and protection of traditional territories demonstrates the effectiveness of matriarchal governance models. Women’s roles in water protection initiatives and environmental justice advocacy reflect their traditional responsibilities as environmental stewards. By teaching traditional ecological practices and building community resilience, they ensure the preservation of cultural knowledge while fostering environmental responsibility for future generations.
Indigenous Women in Climate Science and Policy
Indigenous women are revolutionizing climate science and policy by integrating traditional knowledge with contemporary environmental research. Their unique perspectives combine multi-generational ecological observations with spiritual and cultural understandings of land and water. Through advocacy and leadership, they shape environmental policy while emphasizing community-based solutions and traditional governance models. Their research methodologies enhance scientific approaches by incorporating relationship-based and culturally appropriate methods. Indigenous women’s documentation of environmental changes, combined with traditional adaptation strategies, provides crucial insights for climate action policy.
Traditional Food Revitalization
Indigenous women are leading transformative efforts in food sovereignty, combining traditional knowledge with innovative approaches to address climate change impacts on food security. Their leadership in restoring traditional food systems encompasses the protection of ancestral food sources, preservation of Indigenous dietary knowledge, and maintenance of ceremonial food practices. Through community initiatives like gardens and seed sanctuaries, traditional food education programs, and youth mentorship, they ensure the transmission of crucial food knowledge across generations. Their work recognizes Indigenous diets as fundamental to holistic health, embracing traditional nutritional wisdom and cultural healing practices. These food sovereignty efforts extend to environmental stewardship, incorporating sustainable harvesting practices, habitat conservation, and biodiversity protection. As they develop climate-resilient food systems and strengthen community food networks, Indigenous women demonstrate how traditional food practices can address contemporary challenges while maintaining cultural connections and promoting community well-being.
Sustainable Crafts and Economic Resilience
Indigenous women are leading a powerful resurgence of traditional craft economies, weaving together ancestral knowledge with innovative approaches to address contemporary challenges. This revival honours the sacred relationships and protocols inherent in Indigenous craft practices while creating sustainable economic opportunities. Through their work, traditional techniques and materials merge with modern adaptations, maintaining cultural authenticity while meeting current market demands.
These initiatives extend beyond economic development to encompass environmental stewardship and cultural preservation. Women entrepreneurs integrate sustainable harvesting practices and climate-adaptive techniques while maintaining the ceremonial significance of their crafts. Their approach to material sourcing and production emphasizes ecological conservation and waste reduction, demonstrating how traditional practices can address modern environmental challenges.
Through community-based economies and fair-trade practices, these initiatives support economic self-determination while ensuring the transmission of cultural knowledge to future generations. This renaissance in Indigenous craft economies demonstrates how traditional practices can evolve to meet contemporary needs while maintaining spiritual and cultural foundations.
Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change
Indigenous women face unique challenges from climate change that intersect with their traditional roles as caregivers, food providers, water protectors, and Knowledge Keepers. Their experiences encompass disruptions to food gathering, changes in water availability, reduced access to medicinal plants, and increased pressures on ceremonial and cultural practices. Despite these challenges, Indigenous women demonstrate remarkable leadership in developing comprehensive responses to climate impacts.
Their initiatives include community-based adaptation strategies that honour traditional knowledge while creating innovative solutions. Through women’s support networks and intergenerational teaching programs, they strengthen community resilience while preserving cultural practices. Their gender-specific approaches recognize the distinct responsibilities and knowledge systems of women, incorporating traditional healing practices and matriarchal leadership models.
These leaders advocate for gender-responsive climate policies while building economic opportunities and strengthening health support systems, demonstrating how women’s traditional roles as leaders and innovators can inform effective climate adaptation strategies.
The Path Forward: Supporting Indigenous Women’s Leadership
The path forward demonstrates the critical need to strengthen and amplify Indigenous women’s roles in environmental stewardship and climate resilience. This support framework encompasses multiple dimensions that recognize and enhance Indigenous women’s traditional authority and knowledge.
Increased funding represents a fundamental shift in supporting Indigenous women-led climate initiatives. Rematriarchal funding resources must be developed by Indigenous Peoples and Canada and flow directly to community-based adaptation programs and traditional knowledge preservation projects. This funding should be sustained and flexible, allowing communities to define their own priorities and approaches. Support must extend beyond short-term projects to enable long-term planning and implementation of climate initiatives, cultural revitalization efforts, and sustainable economic development. Such investment acknowledges the vital role of Indigenous women in environmental protection while supporting intergenerational knowledge transfer and community-led research.
Meaningful policy inclusion requires transformative change in how decision-making processes engage Indigenous women. Their participation must extend beyond consultation to embrace true partnership and leadership, recognizing their unique perspectives and traditional authority. This involves direct participation in environmental governance, recognition of traditional systems, and support for Indigenous-led policy development. Policy frameworks must protect Indigenous rights and sovereignty while acknowledging matriarchal leadership models that have successfully guided environmental stewardship for generations.
Capacity-building initiatives must honour traditional knowledge while creating opportunities for enhanced leadership in climate action. These programs should combine respect for traditional teaching methods with access to contemporary tools and resources. Through women’s leadership development opportunities, technical training, and cross-cultural exchanges, Indigenous women strengthen their ability to address climate challenges. Mentorship programs and professional development support ensure the continuation of traditional knowledge while building new skills for current environmental challenges.
Recognition of Indigenous women’s contributions to climate action must transcend superficial acknowledgment to include meaningful support and respect for their environmental authority. This involves formal recognition of their contributions while protecting intellectual property rights and supporting Indigenous-led initiatives. Celebrating traditional knowledge and preserving cultural practices ensures these vital approaches continue to inform climate solutions. Documentation and sharing of success stories inspire future generations while demonstrating the effectiveness of Indigenous women’s leadership in environmental stewardship.
Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
(Image Credit: Shutterstock, Licensed)
The post The Role of Indigenous Women in Climate Resilience and Adaptation appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
The Role of Indigenous Women in Climate Resilience and Adaptation
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
