The Indigenous World 2025: Indigenous Summit: Just Transition – Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives, Knowledge, and Lived Experiences

Written on 25 April 2025. Posted in Indigenous Summit - Just Transition

The global transition to a green economy is accelerating, driven by the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. This transition is not occurring in a vacuum, however; it has profound implications for Indigenous Peoples, whose lands and livelihoods are increasingly targeted for resource extraction and renewable energy projects. Renewable energy, electric vehicles, and “green” mining are being promoted as solutions to the climate crisis. But if history repeats itself, these industries will expand at the expense of Indigenous lands, rights, and sovereignty.

The Just Transition: Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives, Knowledge and Lived Experiences Summit (the summit from hereon) was a response to this challenge. On 8-10 October 2024, in Geneva, Switzerland, Indigenous delegations from all seven socio-cultural regions came together to address the pressing question: How do we ensure the green economy does not become another chapter of exploitation but instead a turning point for justice?

Indigenous voices have often been excluded from the high-level negotiations that determine how resources are extracted and who benefits. For the industrial modern world, the green economy is a golden opportunity—for Indigenous Peoples, it is yet another existential threat wrapped in sustainability slogans.

This summit marked a historic milestone as the first Indigenous-led gathering on reshaping the green economy. For the first time, Indigenous Peoples came together to set the agenda, define priorities, draw lines and engage directly with global stakeholders on their own terms. And, this time, they entered the discussion as recognized partners and rightsholders.

This article is part of the 39^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. The photo above is of an Indigenous activist Funa-ay Claver, a Bontok Igorot, standing alongside Indigenous youth activists and others. They are protesting against the repressive laws and human rights violations suffered through the actions and projects of the Government of the Philippines and other actors against Indigenous Peoples at President Marcos Jr’s national address on 22 July 2024 in Quezon City, Philippines. The photo was taken by Katribu Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas and is the cover of The Indigenous World 2025 where this article is featured. Find The Indigenous World 2025 in full here

The moment of truth: Why this summit was critical

The concept of a just transition, broadly defined, aims to ensure that the shift away from fossil fuels does not exacerbate social inequalities. Yet, for Indigenous communities, the reality is that the green transition often mirrors past injustices. The mining of lithium, nickel, and cobalt—key materials for battery production—has led to land dispossession, environmental degradation, and the violation of Indigenous rights. Renewable energy infrastructure, including large-scale solar and wind farms, has been developed on Indigenous territories without adequate consultation or consent.

The summit became a defining moment–a test of whether the green economy can break from the past patterns or will be yet another expansion into re-discovered Indigenous lands. This summit marked a critical turning point by shifting the conversation from one of recognition to one of concrete demands. Indigenous Peoples articulated a clear position: any transition that disregards Indigenous rights cannot be considered just–the position supported by international legal frameworks, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which enshrines the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) as a legal and ethical obligation.

Summit goals and achievements

The summit set out three core objectives:

• To consolidate the Indigenous movement on a just transition into a strong, unified network that spans continents and strengthens international alliances.
• To provide a venue for direct engagement between Indigenous Peoples, global institutions and major actors shaping the green economy, including:
• The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA);
• The Global Battery Alliance (GBA) and key corporate players;
• World Economic Forum (WEF); and
• UN agencies, international human rights and environmental coalitions.
• To articulate a policy framework that centers Indigenous governance and consent in all transition-related projects.

These objectives were met with notable success. Dialogues with WEF, IRMA, GBA, and UN bodies signaled a shift from superficial engagement to substantive discussions. While these discussions remain ongoing, the summit established an essential precedent: Indigenous Peoples must not only be consulted but integrated into decision-making processes at all levels.

Key results: A seat at the table and Outcome Document

The summit was driven by a clear intention: to ensure that Indigenous Peoples not only secure a seat at the table but play a leading role in shaping a just transition. This requires moving beyond mere consultation and toward genuine leadership, where Indigenous knowledge and rights serve as foundational pillars in the green economy’s future.

A major achievement of the summit was the adoption of an Outcome Document, which outlines key principles and policy recommendations, and – if implemented – could reshape the structure of the emerging green economy.

These include:

• Legal enforcement of FPIC: Existing mechanisms for obtaining Indigenous consent are often circumvented or weakened through corporate and governmental loopholes. The document calls for binding legal frameworks that make FPIC a prerequisite for all extractive and energy projects affecting Indigenous lands and territories.
• Indigenous-led governance models: Rather than treating Indigenous participation as a procedural formality, the document advocates for Indigenous governance structures to be embedded within regulatory and decision-making frameworks.
• Economic equity in resource projects: The document rejects the dominant economic model in which Indigenous communities bear the environmental and social costs of extraction while receiving minimal economic benefits. Instead, it proposes revenue-sharing mechanisms and direct Indigenous ownership of energy and mining projects.
• Recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems: The green transition must integrate Indigenous knowledge into climate adaptation and sustainability policies.

Challenges and contradictions in the green transition

A central argument of the summit was that the green economy, as currently structured, does not inherently resolve the systemic issues of resource extraction. While it aims to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, it still operates within a profit-driven paradigm that prioritizes resource extraction over environmental sustainability and social equity. The contradiction is clear: a transition intended to mitigate environmental harm is, in many cases, reproducing it.

The summit’s discussions highlighted case studies where Indigenous communities have successfully resisted exploitative projects while promoting alternative models of development. For instance, Indigenous-owned renewable energy initiatives or projects developed in collaboration with Indigenous leaders, have provided viable models for responsible extraction. These examples underscore that the green transition is not inherently exploitative but that its current trajectory is deeply flawed.

Moving forward: Institutional accountability and Indigenous leadership

The summit was not a conclusion but a strategic intervention in an ongoing struggle. Key action points moving forward include:

• Strengthening Indigenous legal strategies: Indigenous Peoples will pursue stronger legal frameworks at national and international levels.
• Expanding Indigenous economic models: Community-led renewable energy projects and ethical resource governance initiatives will be prioritized to demonstrate alternatives to extractive practices.
• Ensuring institutional accountability: Future engagement with global institutions will focus on holding actors accountable for their commitments to Indigenous rights. This includes advocating for compliance mechanisms that enforce ethical standards in the mining and energy sectors.

Conclusion: A transition without justice is not sustainable

The summit made one fact unmistakably clear: a just transition cannot be defined solely by environmental metrics; it must be evaluated in terms of social and political justice. A green economy that perpetuates land dispossession, weakens Indigenous sovereignty, and prioritizes profit over rights is not a true transition—it is merely a continuation of existing power structures under a new name.

As the global community moves forward, there is an urgent need to shift from superficial commitments to enforceable and bold policies. A just transition cannot be reduced to a mere adjustment of energy systems; it must be a structural transformation that confronts and corrects the historical and ongoing injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples.

The summit was a step toward this goal but its success will ultimately be measured by the extent to which global institutions and governments are willing to rebalance control and recognize Indigenous leadership. Without this shift, the promise of a green future will remain fundamentally compromised. The path forward depends on what we do next.

Thanks to the summit, we are ready.

Indigenous Peoples’ principles for a just transition

• Right to Life: This includes the physical and spiritual integrity of Indigenous Peoples, guaranteeing their present and future existence.
• Right to Self-determination and Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples: A just transition must be based on the recognition, respect, and full implementation of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples as affirmed in international instruments, including the UNDRIP and others, as a minimum standard. The right of self-determination is inherent and is the prerequisite to the enjoyment of all other rights. This includes, among other things, the right to FPIC prior to the approval of any project, the right to participate in decisions affecting our rights, cultural rights, and the rights to lands, waters, air, ice, territories, and resources traditionally used, possessed, or acquired, as well as the right to determine our own priorities for the governance, development, management, protection, and use of our lands, waters, air, ice, and intangible and tangible resources. By virtue of the right of self-determination, Indigenous Peoples freely determine their own political, social, and economic development, future, and rights to equitable benefit-sharing.
• Decolonization: For Indigenous Peoples, a just transition rejects the Doctrine of Discovery and the continued imposition of colonial and extractive resource exploitation, false solutions, military occupation, and activities that threaten our mental, spiritual, reproductive, intergenerational, and physical health, biodiversity, natural ecosystems, cultures, values, and plant and animal relatives. A just transition must be carried out in the context of the decolonization of our lands and ways of life, taking into account all the ways that Indigenous Peoples have experienced and continue to suffer from different forms of colonization, genocide, and the creation of conflict, as a basis for rejecting false solutions and forced choices.
• Reparations, Land Back, and Full Restoration of Lands, Territories, Waters, and Biodiversity: A just transition must ensure the return, recognition, and respect of Indigenous lands, territories, and waters, as well as the protection of all Indigenous natural resources, ecosystems, and other means of livelihood. This must begin with the unrestricted access, restoration, recognition, and respect of our rights to our ancestral lands, territories, and waters, and other resources that were taken without our consent during the colonization process. It also includes respect for our inherent sovereignty and the full, unqualified implementation of our rights, including but not limited to Indigenous land tenure, Indigenous economies, jurisdiction, languages, Indigenous food systems, health, cultures, spirituality, natural world responsibilities, biodiversity, ways of knowing, and ways of life.
• Respect for Indigenous Peoples’ Ways of Life: A just transition must guarantee our food sovereignty, Indigenous economies, Indigenous science, technologies, and innovations, lived experiences, jurisdiction, languages, cultures, spirituality, responsibilities to the natural world, biodiversity, knowledge systems, and all forms of life. This includes respect for Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, beliefs, and ancestral practices of protecting our ecosystems and food systems, and upholding our sacred responsibilities to our peoples, families and future generations. Safeguards and protection of our Indigenous intellectual property rights must be guaranteed. For safeguards and protection, a mechanism must be established to promote, protect, and preserve Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, and initiate a process to establish an institution for the documentation of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge of food systems, ethno-medicine and ethno-plants.
• Transparency and Accountability: A just transition must include and reflect the input and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples, including youth, women, elders, knowledge-holders, persons with disabilities, and active practitioners of Indigenous Peoples’ ways of life, addressing the multiple and intersectional levels of impacts. This includes the opportunity for active and effective negotiations, based on free, prior and informed consent regarding all projects, from design to implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, on and affecting Indigenous Peoples’ lands, territories, resources, and waters. A just transition cannot rely on false solutions such as carbon trading or offsets. It must ensure full transparency in funding sources and accountability, and ensure direct engagement with Indigenous Peoples. Accountability must be established based on evidence and the effective participation of Indigenous Peoples.
• Historical Reparations: A just transition must guarantee historical (economic and non-economic) reparations for the damages caused, following the standards established by human rights courts and bodies, and as determined by the pre-existing Indigenous nations and peoples when demanding such reparations.
• Full Protection of Indigenous Peoples: End the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights and environmental defenders, and cultural practitioners, including but not limited to extrajudicial killings, torture, imprisonment, surveillance, and other threats of harassment, intimidation, and reprisals with impunity, including the policing and militarization of Indigenous Peoples’ territories. Those who engage in these acts must be held accountable.
• Recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Roles and Responsibilities: A just transition must be based on recognition of our role and responsibility as caretakers, stewards, and guardians of our traditional lands, rangelands, forests, deserts, savannas, waters, air, ice, territories, and resources, our Indigenous laws and protocols, and the spiritual, cultural, historic and ongoing relationships we have with the plants, animals, elements, lands, ice, and waters that give us life and identity.
• Maintaining 1.5 degrees: A just transition must contribute to the actual reduction, aversion, or prevention of climate change based on a path to maintain no more than a 1.5-degree temperature increase, and include direct access to financing for Indigenous Peoples’ own projects for climate change aversion and mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and direct access payments for loss and damage.
• Rights-based Approach to Supply Chains: Just transition projects and activities throughout supply chains must not cause harm to Indigenous Peoples, other peoples, ecosystems, or sacred sites. This includes assessing the impacts of the full length of supply chains (from raw materials to end-use projects to waste). This includes rejecting false solutions such as carbon trading or carbon offsets when such market schemes trade off benefits for one people to the detriment of another people’s lands, territories, and resources. State and private actors must also ensure full transparency regarding the sources of funding and investors in these projects, and the expected financial returns for investors, funders and intermediary organizations.

More information on the summit can be found here: www.indigenoussummit.org 

This article was written by Rodion Sulyandziga, Chairperson of the Just Transition: Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives, Knowledge and Lived Experiences Summit and the Indigenous Peoples Global Coordinating Committee (IPGCC).

This article is part of the 39^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. The photo above is of an Indigenous activist Funa-ay Claver, a Bontok Igorot, standing alongside Indigenous youth activists and others. They are protesting against the repressive laws and human rights violations suffered through the actions and projects of the Government of the Philippines and other actors against Indigenous Peoples at President Marcos Jr’s national address on 22 July 2024 in Quezon City, Philippines. The photo was taken by Katribu Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas and is the cover of The Indigenous World 2025 where this article is featured. Find The Indigenous World 2025 in full here

Tags: Business and Human Rights , Conservation, International Processes