Just Transition

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Credit: Indigenous Environmental Network

"We must build visionary economy that is very different than the one we now are in. This requires stopping the bad while at the same time as building the new. We must change the rules to redistribute resources and power to local communities. Just transition initiatives are shifting from dirty energy to energy democracy, from funding highways to expanding public transit, from incinerators and landfills to zero waste, from industrial food systems to food sovereignty, from gentrification to community land rights, from military violence to peaceful resolution, and from rampant destructive development to ecosystem restoration. Core to a just transition is deep democracy in which workers and communities have control over the decisions that affect their daily lives.

To liberate the soil and to liberate our souls we must decolonize our imaginations, remember our way forward and divorce ourselves from the comforts of empire. We must trust that deep in our cultures and ancestries is the diverse wisdom we need to navigate our way towards a world where we live in just relationships with each other and with the earth."[1]


Climate Justice

Climate Justice

Food Sovereignty Transition

Dr. Vandana Shiva outlines nine steps necessary to transition away from the status quo production of food as a commodity via chemical intensive Industrial Agriculture to a system of Food Sovereignty. The steps are:

From Fakeness to Reality

The first transition is from fiction to reality: Moving away from the idea of corporations being people and recognizing there are real people everywhere that are facing nutritional crisis and there are people that can grow food everywhere. "Whereas the rise of industrial agriculture was based on the removal of people from the land, the emergence of the new agriculture paradigm is based on returning to the dirt, to the Earth, and to the soil: in cities and in schools, on terraces and on walls. There is no person who cannot grow food, and part of being fully human is reconnecting to the Earth and its communities."[2] Farming and Gardening can become revolutions everywhere as people begin to create real food systems made to protect the Earth and People.

From Reductionism to Agroecology

The second transition is from mechanistic, reductionist science to an agroecological science based on relationships and interconnectedness: "It is the recognition that soil, seed, water, farmers, and our bodies are intelligent beings, not dead matter or machines... The old universities teaching chemical warfare as agricultural expertise are being replaced by farms servings as schools, where the knowledge of real farming to produce real food is growing. A transition away from the rule of corporations and profits is also a knowledge transition toward the emerging scientific paradigm of agroecology"[3] This new paradigm requires a knowledge commons where ideas, methods, and techniques can be openly accessed and shared. As we grow this knowledge commons the interconnectedness needed to proliferate agroecology will expand.

From Intellectual Property to Seed Commons

The third transition is from seed as the "intellectual property" of corporations to seed as living, diverse, and evolving: toward seed as the commons that is the source of food and the source of life: "The creation of community seed banks and seed libraries is part of the movements for seed freedom that are resisting the imposition of unscientific and unjust seed laws based on uniformity. Also part of this resistance are the scientific movements innovating with participatory and evolutionary breeding, which are offering successful and superior alternatives to industrial breeding."[4]

From Chemical Monocultures to Biodiversity

The fourth transition is from chemical intensification to biodiversity intensification and ecological intensification, and from monocultures to diversity: This involves removing chemicals and toxins as the main input into agriculture to chemical-free, agroecological systems. "This transition must also move away from the fiction of "high yield" to the reality of diverse systems outputs, including quantity, quality, taste, health, and nutrition. Not only are biodiverse agricultural systems more productive and resilient, biodiverse food systems are the best insurance against diseases linked to nutritional deficiencies..."[5]

From Commodification to Farmer's Rights

The fifth transition is from pseudoproductivity to real productivity: This involves the decommodification of food and analyzing the cost of social, health, and ecological costs of chemical-, capital-, and fossil-fuel-intensive industrial agriculture, as well as the benefits of ecological agriculture for public health, social cohesion, and ecological sustainability. "... A real productivity calculus recognizes farmers' rights. In an ecological and living world, farmers are not just producers of food; they are conservators and builders of biodiversity and a stable climate, they are providers of health, and they are custodians of our diverse and collective cultures."[6] Agroecological food sovereignty projects around the world are working on creating this framework path towards transitioning away from industrial agriculture.

From Junk Food to Healthy Food

The sixth transition is from fake food to real food, from food that destroys our health to food that nourishes our bodies and minds: "This is also a transition from food as a commodity produced for profits to food as the most important source of health and well-being. The entire food and agricultural system treats food as a commodity to be produced, processesd, and traded solely to maximize corporate profits. The highest use value of food is in providing health and nourishment, and the primary contribution of food is to public health, not corporate profits. Commodities are based on quantity alone, irrespective of whether they are nutritionally empty or full of toxins and poisons. Food as a tradable commodity loses its use value of nourishment."[7]

From Big Ag to Small Farms

The seventh transition is from the obsession with "big" to a nurturing of "small," from the global to the local: "Large-scale, long-distance food chains in an industrialized, globalized food system must become a small-scale, short-distance food web based on the ecological enlightenment that no place is too small to produce food. Everyone is an eater, and everyone has the right to healthy, safe food with the smallest ecological footprint. Everyone can also be a grower of food, which means that food can and must be grown everywhere." [8] A common argument for industrial agriculture is that large scale production is needed to feed people living in large cities. Dr.Shiva addresses this concern three fold:
1) "... large-scale farms are not producing food; they are producing commodities. Commodities do not feed people."
2) "... every city should have its own "foodshed" that supplies most of its food needs in the same way that cities have "watersheds" that supply water. Larger cities can have larger foodsheds. Planning for food needs, as well as integrating the city and the countryside through good food, should be part of Urban Planning.
3) ... "the new food and agricultural movement is exploding in cities. Urban communities are reclaiming the food system through urban gardens, community gardens, school gardens, and gardens on terraces and balconies and walls. No place is too small to nourish a plant that can nourish us."[9]

From Exploitation to Justice

The eighth transition is from false, manipulated, and fictitious prices based on the Law of Exploitation to real and just prices based on the Law of Return: "In rich countries, citizens are questioning "cheap" food and what an over consumption of this food means for people's health. In poor countries, there are riots and protests and changes in regimes because of rising prices of food linked to free market polices. The Egyptian "Arab Spring," for example, started because of the rising prices of bread. Both the "cheap" food in rich countries and the rising costs of food in poor countries are based on a food system that puts profits about the rights of people to healthy, safe, and affordable food. This is based on the manipulation of prices by corporate giants and financial institutions through subsidies in rich countries, financial speculation, and betting on agriculture. Fair trade initiatives, on the other hand, allow farmers to get a fair and just return for their contributions to health and planetary care."

Dr. Vandana Shiva continues:

"The price of anything should reflect its true cost and true benefits: the high costs of ecological degradation and damage to people's health in the case of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture, and the positive contributions of ecological agriculture to rejuvenating the soil, considering biodiversity and water, mitigating climate change, and providing healthy, nutritious food." [10]

From Competition to Cooperation

The ninth transition is from the false idea of competition to the reality of cooperation: "The entire edifice of industrial production, free trade, and globalization is based on competition as a virtue, as an essential human trait. Plants are put into competition with one another and with insects, including pollinators. Farmers are pitted against one another and against consumers, and every country is in competition with every other country through chasing investment performance and through trade wars. Competition creates a downward spiral from the perspective of the planet and people, and an upward spike for corporate profits. But the ultimate consequence of competition is collapse."

Dr. Vandana Shiva continues:

"The reality of the web of life is cooperation: from the tiniest cell and microorganism to the largest mammal. Cooperation between diverse species increases food production and controls pests and weeds. Cooperation between people creates communities and living economics that maximize human welfare, including, livelihoods, and minimze industry's profits. Cooperative systems are based on the Law of Return. They create sustainability, justice, and peace. In times of collapse, cooperation is a survival imperative."[11]


The Red Deal

Cover of The Red Nation's book 'The Red Deal'

The Red Deal is The Red Nation's response to The Green New Deal providing an alternative Indigenous-Feminist-led decolonial revolutionary roadmap to climate and social justice.

the Full Program of The Red Deal: Part One: End The Occupation | Part Two: Heal Our Bodies | Part Three: Heal Our Planet

The Re-Instatement of Treaty Rights

From 1776 to 1871, the U.S. Congress ratified more than 300 treaties with Native Nations. A provision in the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act withdrew federal recognition of Native Nations as separate political entities, contracted through treaties made with the United States. As a result, treaty-making was abolished; and it was established that “no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.”

We demand the reinstatement of treaty-making and the acknowledgement of Native independence. We demand Native Nations assume their rightful place as independent Nations guaranteed the fundamental right to self-determination for their people, communities, land bases, and political and economic systems.[12]

The Full Rights and Equal Protection for Native People

Centuries of forced relocation and land dispossession have resulted in the mass displacement of Native Nations and peoples from their original and ancestral homelands. Today in the United States four of five Native people do not live within reservation or federal trust land. Many were and are forced to leave reservation and trust lands as economic and political refugees due to high unemployment, government policies, loss of land, lack of infrastructure, and social violence. Yet, off-reservation Native peoples encounter equally high rates of sexual and physical violence, homelessness, incarceration, poverty, discrimination, and economic exploitation in cities and rural border towns.

We demand that treaty rights and Indigenous rights be applied and upheld both on- and off-reservation and federal trust land. All of North America, the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific is Indigenous land. Our rights do not begin or end at imposed imperial borders we did not create nor give our consent to. Rights shall be enforced pursuant to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the historical and political doctrines of specific Tribes[13]

The End to Disciplinary Violence Against Native Peoples and All Oppressed Peoples

In the United States, more than three million people are incarcerated in the largest prison system in the world. Native peoples and oppressed peoples are disproportionately incarcerated and persecuted by law enforcement. Within this system, Native people are the group most likely to be murdered and harassed by law enforcement and to experience high rates of incarceration. This proves that the system is inherently racist and disciplines politically-disenfranchised people to keep them oppressed and prevent them from challenging racist institutions like prisons, police, and laws that maintain the status quo. Racist disciplinary institutions contribute to the continued dispossession and death of Native peoples and lifeways in North America.

We demand an end to the racist and violent policing of Native peoples on-and off-reservation and federal trust lands. We demand an end to the racist state institutions that unjustly target and imprison Native peoples and all oppressed peoples.[14]

The End to Discrimination Against the Native Silent Majority: Youth and The Poor

Native youth and Native poor and unsheltered experience oppression and violence at rates higher than other classes and groups of Native peoples. Native people experience poverty and homelessness at rates higher than other groups. Native youth suicide and criminalization rates continue to soar. Native youth now comprise as much as 70% of the Native population and experience rates of physical and sexual violence and PTSD higher than other groups. Native poor and unsheltered experience rates of criminalization, alcoholism, and violence at higher rates than other groups. Because many Native youth and poor and unsheltered live off reservation and trust lands, they are treated as inauthentic and without rights. Native youth and Native poor continue to be marginalized and ignored within Native nations, dominant political systems, and mainstream social justice organizing.

We demand an end to the silencing and blaming of Native youth and Native poor and unsheltered. We demand an end to the unjust violence and policing they experience. Native youth and Native poor and unsheltered are relatives who deserve support and representation. We demand they be at the center of Native struggles for liberation.[15]

The End to the Discrimination, Persecution, Killing, Torture, and Rape of Native Women

Native women are the targets of legal, political, and extra-legal persecution. killing, rape, torture, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in North America. This is part of the ongoing process of eliminating women’s political and customary roles as leaders in Native societies. In the United States more than one in three Native women will be raped in their lifetime, often as children. Since 1980, about 1,200 Native women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada; many are young girls. Native women are at higher risk of being targeted for human trafficking and sexual exploitation than other groups. Native women continue to experience sexism and marginalization within Native and dominant political systems, and within mainstream social justice approaches.

We demand the end to the legal, political, and extra-legal discrimination, persecution, killing, torture, and rape of Native women. Women are the backbone of our political and customary government systems. They give and represent life and vitality. We demand that Native women be at the center of Native struggles for liberation.[16]

The End to the Discrimination, Persecution, Killing, Torture, and Rape of Native Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Two-spirit People (LGBTQ2+)

Native LGBTQ2+ people experience persecution, killing, torture, and rape within Native Nations and within dominant society. The processes of colonization and heteropatriarchy impose binary gender roles, nuclear family structures, and male-dominated hierarchies that are fundamentally at odds with Native customary laws and social organization, where LGBTQ2+ people historically held positions of privilege and esteem. The effect of this system for Native LGBTQ2+ is violent. Native LGBTQ2+ experience rates of murder, sexual exploitation, hate crimes, discrimination, substance abuse, and homelessness at high rates. Like Native youth, poor, homeless, and women, Native LGBTQ2+ continue to be marginalized and ignored within Native and dominant political systems, and within metropolitan-based social justice approaches that ignore the mostly rural- based issues of Native LGBTQ2+.

We demand an end to the legal, political, and extra-legal discrimination, persecution, killing, torture, and rape of Native LGBTQ2+ in Native societies and dominant society. Native LGBTQ2+ are relatives who deserve representation and dignity. We demand that they be at the center of Native struggles for liberation.[17]

The End to the Dehumanization of Native Peoples

The appropriation of Native imagery and culture for entertainment, such as sports mascots and other racist portrayals, and the celebration of genocide for holidays and amusement, such as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, dehumanize Native people and attempt to whitewash ongoing histories of genocide and dispossession. These appropriations contribute to the ongoing erasure of Native peoples and seek to minimize the harsh realities and histories of colonization. These appropriations are crimes against history.

We demand an end to the dehumanization of Native peoples through cultural appropriation, racist imagery, and the celebrations of genocide and colonization. Condemning symbolic and representational violence is an essential part of any material struggle for liberation.[18]

Access to Appropriate Education, Healthcare, Social Services, Employment, and Housing

Access to quality education, healthcare, social services, and housing are fundamental human rights. However, in almost every quality of life standard, Native people have the worst access to adequate educational opportunities, health care, social services, and housing in North America. Native people also have higher rates of unemployment on- and off-reservation than any other group in the United States. Access to meaningful standards of living is historically guaranteed under many treaty rights, but have been consistently ignored and unevenly applied across geography and region.

We demand the universal enforcement and application of services to improve the standard of living for Native peoples pursuant to provisions in treaties and the UNDRIP, whether such peoples reside on- or off-reservation and trust lands. North America is our home and we demand more than mere survival. We demand conditions to thrive.[19]

The Repatriation of Native Lands and Lives and the Protection of Nonhuman Relatives

The ethical treatment of the land and nonhuman relatives begins with how we act. We must first be afforded dignified lives as Native peoples who are free to perform our purpose as stewards of life if we are to protect and respect our nonhuman relatives—the land, the water, the air, the plants, and the animals. We must have the freedom and health necessary to make just, ethical and thoughtful decisions to uphold life. We experience the destruction and violation of our nonhuman relatives wrought by militarization, toxic dumping and contamination, and resource extraction as violence. Humans perpetrate this violence against our nonhuman relatives. We will be unable to live on our lands and continue on as relatives recognized by the ancestors if this violence is allowed to continue.

We demand an end to all corporate and U.S. control of Native land and resources. We demand an end to Tribal collusion with such practices. We demand that Points 1-8 be enforced so as to allow Native peoples to live in accordance with their purpose as human beings who protect and respect life. Humans have created this crisis and continue to wage horrific violence against our nonhuman relatives. It is our responsibility to change this.[20]


The End to Capitalism-Colonialism

Native people are under constant assault by a capitalist-colonial logic that seeks the erasure of non-capitalist ways of life. Colonial economies interrupt cooperation and association and force people instead into hierarchical relations with agents of colonial authority who function as a permanent occupying force on Native lands. These agents are in place to control and discipline Native peoples to ensure that we comply with capitalist-colonial logics. There are many methods and agents of enforcement and discipline. There are the police. There are corporations. There are also so-called ‘normal’ social and cultural practices like male dominance, heterosexuality and individualism that encourage us to conform to the common sense of capitalism-colonialism. These are all violent forms of social control and invasion that extract life from Natives and other oppressed peoples in order to increase profit margins and consolidate power in the hands of wealthy nation-states like the United States. The whole system depends on violence to facilitate the accumulation of wealth and power and to suppress other, non-capitalist ways of life that might challenge dominant modes of power. Political possibilities for Native liberation therefore cannot emerge from forms of economic or institutional development, even if these are Tribally controlled under the guise of ‘self-determination’ or ‘culture.’ They can only emerge from directly challenging the capitalist-colonial system of power through collective struggle and resistance.

We demand the end to capitalism-colonialism on a global level. Native peoples, youth, poor and unsheltered, women, LGBTQ2 and nonhuman relatives experience extreme and regular forms of violence because the whole system relies on our death. Capitalism-colonialism means death for Native peoples. For Native peoples to live, capitalism and colonialism must die.[21]


United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

See: UNDRIP

Front Cover of the Arabic Edition of the UNDRIP ********* إعالن األمم المتحدة بشأن حقوق الشعوب األصلية *********


The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Thursday, 13 September 2007 with 144 votes in favor. There were also 11 abstentions and 34 non-voting states, with four settler colonial states initially voting against the Declaration: The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The declaration consists of a preamble listing 24 notes (emphasizing, recognizing, encouraging), followed by 46 articles outlining Indigenous rights.

As summarized by the United Nations:

Today the Declaration is the most comprehensive international instrument on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. It establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the Indigenous Peoples of the world and it elaborates on existing human rights standards and fundamental freedoms as they apply to the specific situation of Indigenous Peoples.[22]

The Preamble welcomes the organization of Indigenous Peoples to end oppression and discrimination, and "is convinced that control by indigenous peoples over developments affecting them and their lands, territories and resources will enable them" to fulfil their rights. Recognizing the importance of "respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices" for "proper management of the environment", the preamble also emphasizes "the contribution of the demilitarization of the lands and territories of indigenous peoples to peace, economic and social progress."

Just Transition

The UNDRIP establishes an international legal framework centering Indigenous Rights essential to the just transition.

UNDRIP clearly enshrines the international legal right of Indigenous Peoples to:

1) Have control over their land, territories, and resources (Preamble);

2) Conserve and protect the environment and the productive capacity of their lands, territories, and resources (Article 29);

3) Strengthen their relationship with their land to uphold responsibilities to future generations (Article 25);

4) Receive legal recognition and protection from states respecting Indigenous land tenure systems and rights to traditional land, territories, and resources (Article 26);

5) Restitution of lands, territories, and resources taken, occupied, used or damaged without free, prior and informed consent (Article 28);


A growing body of scientific evidence verifies that upholding these rights is the most effective way to prevent deforestation across the planet.[23] Hundreds of studies on the effectiveness of Native land reclamation in the Kawsak Sacha (Amazon Rainforest) have shown that restoring Indigenous Sovereignty therein has prevented billions of tons of carbon emissions.[24][25]

Land Back

The Black Panther Party

See: Free Breakfast For Children

Sources

<http://www.ienearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IENJustTransitionPrinciples.pdf>

  1. ↑ https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/
  2. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Page:127
  3. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology,Page:127
  4. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology,Page:128
  5. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology,Page:128
  6. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology,Page:128-129
  7. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Page: 129
  8. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Page: 130
  9. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Page: 131
  10. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Page: 131-132
  11. ↑ Dr.Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World:The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Page: 132-133
  12. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 4
  13. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf ; Page,4
  14. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 5
  15. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 5
  16. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 6
  17. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 6
  18. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 7
  19. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page, 7
  20. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf ; Page, 8
  21. ↑ https://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf; Page 8
  22. ↑ https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples
  23. ↑ https://truthout.org/articles/un-report-says-indigenous-sovereignty-could-save-the-planet/
  24. ↑ https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2014/07/29/indigenous-land-management-effective-combating-climate-change
  25. ↑ https://branchoutnow.org/the-carbon-market-shell-game/
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