These are dark days for anyone who cares about the environment. Climate change is doing irreparable harm to ecosystems and livelihoods. Humans have caused the largest mass extinction since an asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago. We are on course to lose 20-50 per cent of all living species within this century.
We have placed our hopes on large-scale regulation and grand multinational bargains. Those measures are now at great risk. The United States government has signalled that it may back out of the Paris climate treaty. If it does, decades of diplomatic negotiations will come undone. The United States is not alone. Many countries are turning inward, prioritising short-term economic interest over long-term stewardship.
Read more: Climate change has pushed Earth into 'uncharted territory'
We need to fight even harder for science-based, foresighted environmental policy at national and international levels. But we cannot rely on that fight alone. We should invest simultaneously in bottom-up environmentalism, by supporting the people who have the most to lose.
In June 2016, I joined 200 farmers under a clutch of mango trees in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. In 2010, their chiefs had signed a 50-year, 42,000-hectare lease with a palm oil company. The thousands of people living on that land were not notified about the agreement, let alone given a choice.
The company began clearing forests. Allegedly, it used chemicals that contaminated rivers and streams. Community members started protesting at the company gates.
Under pressure, the company finally disclosed the agreement in 2015. Most community members were illiterate; even those who could read found the legalese cryptic. Some farmers connected with two community legal workers, Ali Turay and Haja Conteh, who were working in their district. Turay and Conteh translated the lease agreement into Temne, the local language. The company had committed to a paltry $2.40 (£1.93) per hectare per year in rent. Communities had received irregular payments from their paramount chief that amounted to even less.
Turay and Conteh explained that the lease was illegal. Chiefs play a role as stewards under Sierra Leonean law, but they cannot enter a lease agreement without the consent of the families who have customary rights to the land. The paralegals and a lawyer helped the communities to renegotiate. The new lease is not yet finalised, but the company has agreed to reduce the scope to a sixth of the original land mass and to increase rent payments.
The paralegals educated the land-owning families about what can be done to mitigate environmental damage caused by large-scale palm-oil production. The farmers have turned that knowledge into demands in the negotiations. The company should stay away from swamps, for example, because swamps are susceptible to forest fires if drained. It should avoid pesticides classified as hazardous by the World Health Organisation, and minimise chemical fertilisers. Company officials have agreed to incorporate many of the proposed measures in the new lease.
I work with teams of paralegals in ten countries, and this is what we have seen: with a bit of scientific and legal empowerment, the people at the receiving end of environmental harm can be a powerful force for environmental stewardship. Their lives depend on it. Their interests are aligned with those of the planet.
Indigenous people who live in forests and other wild places exemplify this dynamic. Research in the Amazon, for example, found less deforestation in land governed by indigenous people than in protected areas managed by the state. I am referring to many others as well: farmers neighbouring iron ore mines, fisher people sharing coastline with industrial ports, slum dwellers breathing the worst of a city’s air.
It would be a mistake to romanticise these communities. There are genuine disagreements among them about the right balance between short-term economic benefit and environmental damage. We also encounter community leaders who would sell out their people if they could get away with it, and many individuals whose struggle to survive leaves little time to fight for the future.
But everywhere we work we find people like the farmers leading the renegotiations in Port Loko, who are standing up both for themselves and for the environment.
It is a dangerous time to be doing so. The watchdog group Global Witness documented 185 people who were murdered in 2015 for challenging abuses by mining, hydroelectric, agri-business and other extractive industries. Isidro Baldenegro López, a Mexican farmer who won the Goldman Prize – known as the environmental Nobel – for his work against deforestation, was shot and killed on January 15 this year. As a boy he had seen his father killed, for the same reason.
For our species to have a chance of at averting environmental collapse, these people need to be protected against retaliation. Moreover, they need to have a say in the decisions we make. The crisis of environment is intertwined with the crisis of inequality. We know we won’t achieve sensible financial regulation if we only rely on technocrats and bankers to write the rules. Similarly, we won’t make sane choices about our environment without the voice and insight and leadership of those who have the most at stake. If we care about the environment, we need to invest in the people who are at the greatest risk of harm. Paralegal names have been changed.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
