Across Canada, Indigenous communities are taking a stand as guardians of the nation’s waterways. Rooted in a sacred relationship with water that spans millennia, these “Water Protectors” are leading innovative initiatives to safeguard rivers, lakes, and oceans in the face of climate change. Their efforts not only address immediate environmental concerns but also assert Indigenous rights and revitalize cultural practices tied to water.
The Sacred Relationship with Water
For Indigenous Peoples across Canada, water is not merely a resource but a living entity deserving of respect and protection. Josephine Mandamin, an Anishinaabe Elder and renowned Water Walker, once said, “The water is sick… we need to do something for the water.” This sentiment echoes through many Indigenous cultures, driving a powerful movement for water protection.
Climate change poses unprecedented threats to Canada’s waterways, from changing precipitation patterns and increased flooding to rising water temperatures and altered ecosystems. These changes not only impact the environment but also threaten the cultural practices and livelihoods of Indigenous communities deeply connected to these water bodies.
Traditional Water Governance
(Image credit: Arno Ryser, Unsplash)
At the heart of Indigenous water protection efforts lies traditional water governance – systems of stewardship that have sustained healthy waterways for generations. These governance models, often overlooked by colonial systems, are now gaining recognition for their effectiveness in promoting sustainable water use.
In the Great Lakes region, Anishinaabe water governance is rooted in the concept of “mino-mnaamodzawin” or “living the good life.” This holistic approach considers the interconnectedness of all living things and emphasizes responsibility to future generations. Deborah McGregor, an Anishinaabe scholar and advocate, explains, “Our traditional laws teach us that we have a sacred responsibility to protect the water, not just for ourselves, but for all of creation.”
Indigenous-Led Water Protection Initiatives
Across the country, Indigenous communities are launching grassroots initiatives to monitor, protect, and restore their waterways.
Community-Based Monitoring Programs
The Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario have developed a comprehensive water monitoring program. Community members, trained in both traditional knowledge and Western scientific methods, regularly test water quality and track changes in the watershed. This program not only provides crucial data on water health but also empowers the community to take an active role in water stewardship.
Restoration of Traditional Water Systems
In British Columbia, the Okanagan Nation Alliance has been leading efforts to restore salmon habitats damaged by development and exacerbated by climate change. By combining traditional knowledge with modern conservation techniques, they’ve successfully reintroduced salmon to streams that haven’t been seen in decades.
Pauline Terbasket, executive director of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, shares, “Bringing the salmon back is not just about food security or environmental health. It’s about cultural revitalization and asserting our role as caretakers of the land and water.”
Legal and Policy Advocacy
Indigenous Water Protectors are also making waves in the legal and policy realms. Many nations are asserting their inherent rights to water governance, challenging colonial water laws that have long marginalized Indigenous perspectives.
The Yukon First Nations’ Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow proposal, which eventually led to modern treaties in the territory, explicitly includes provisions for water management and protection. This groundbreaking approach ensures that Indigenous water rights are enshrined in legally binding agreements.
Combining Traditional Knowledge and Western Science
One of the strengths of Indigenous water protection initiatives is their ability to bridge traditional knowledge and Western scientific approaches. This synergy creates more comprehensive and effective water management strategies.
In the Northwest Territories, the Tracking Change project brings together Indigenous knowledge holders and university researchers to study the Mackenzie River Basin. This collaborative approach has yielded insights into climate change impacts that neither group could have achieved alone.
Dahti Tsetso, a member of the Dehcho First Nations involved in the project, notes, “Our Elders can tell you how the river has changed over decades. When you combine that with scientific data, you get a full picture of what’s happening and what we need to do.”
Water Ceremonies and Cultural Revitalization
Water protection is not just about environmental conservation – it’s also about cultural revitalization. Many Indigenous-led initiatives incorporate traditional ceremonies and cultural practices, recognizing the inseparable link between water health and community wellbeing.
The Water Walks, initiated by Anishinaabe Elder Josephine Mandamin, have inspired Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike to reconnect with waterways. These ceremonial walks around the Great Lakes and other water bodies raise awareness about water issues while revitalizing cultural practices.
Autumn Peltier, a young Anishinaabe water activist following in Mandamin’s footsteps, emphasizes the spiritual dimension of water protection: “We don’t see water as a resource. We see it as a living thing, as sacred. That’s why we call ourselves Water Protectors, not protesters.”
Challenges and Successes
Despite their crucial work, Indigenous Water Protectors face significant challenges. Industrial activities, from pipeline projects to mining operations, continue to threaten water sources in many Indigenous territories. Navigating complex jurisdictional issues between Indigenous, provincial, and federal governments also poses ongoing challenges.
However, there have been notable successes. In 2021, the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s efforts to protect the Wedzin Kwa (Morice River) from pipeline construction garnered national attention and support. Their actions highlighted the role of Indigenous peoples as frontline defenders of Canada’s waters.
The Future of Indigenous Water Protection
As climate change intensifies, the role of Indigenous Water Protectors becomes ever more crucial. Emerging leaders are combining traditional knowledge with new technologies, using drones, AI, and social media to monitor and protect waterways.
Eriel Deranger, Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action, sees hope in these developments: “Our young people are taking up the mantle of water protection, armed with both our ancestral knowledge and new tools. They’re the future of this movement.”
Indigenous Water Protection as a Model for Climate Resilience
(Image credit: Getty Images, Licensed, Unsplash)
The efforts of Indigenous Water Protectors offer a powerful model for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Their holistic approach, which views water health as inseparable from community and cultural well-being, provides a roadmap for sustainable water management in a changing climate.
As Canada grapples with the water-related impacts of climate change, from flooding to droughts, the wisdom and practices of Indigenous Water Protectors become increasingly valuable. Their work not only protects vital ecosystems but also paves the way for a more just and sustainable approach to water governance.
Supporting Indigenous water rights and protection efforts is not just an environmental imperative – it’s a step towards reconciliation and a more sustainable future for all Canadians. As we face the growing challenges of climate change, the vision and dedication of Indigenous Water Protectors light the way toward a future where clean, healthy waters flow for generations to come.
Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
(Header Image Credit: Ries Bosch, Unsplash)
The post Water Protectors: Indigenous-Led Initiatives Safeguarding Canada’s Waterways in a Changing Climate appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Water Protectors: Indigenous-Led Initiatives Safeguarding Canada’s Waterways in a Changing Climate
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.
