FRONTLINE VOICES: Environmental Activist Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim on Why Indigenous People Should Lead on Climate
On International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we’re looking to Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Mbororo pastoralist people in Chad. Hindou is an environmental activist who advocates for the greater inclusion of indigenous people, their knowledge and traditions in efforts to tackle climate change. In 2019, she became one of 17 leaders appointed by the United Nations as official advocates for the Sustainable Development Goals. Hindou is also one of the 100 phenomenal leaders featured in our new book and recently joined our CEO Alyse Nelson on the Power to Empower podcast series.
The timely theme for today’s commemoration is ‘Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.’ In her own words, here’s Hindou on the daily reality of climate change and why it’s critical that indigenous voices lead the way forward.
“We are living the impact of climate change in our daily lives.”
When people talk about climate change, some are reading about it in books or watching movies, but in my community, we are living the impact of climate in our daily lives. We are seeing our seasons change a lot. Our dry season is becoming very long with very hot weather, up to 48° — 50° Celsius (118° — 122° Fahrenheit), and in the desert it can go up to 54°C (129°F). Our rain season has become much shorter with heavy rains that can draw floods. Or there is not enough rain that will end with a drought. In big towns where people used to use cars and motorbikes, they now are using canoes to go from one neighborhood to another one.
“In our community, people do not depend on end of month salaries — they depend on rainfall.”
Climate change is attacking not only our environment but our human dignity. It’s impacting our social lives, creating conflict between communities that are fighting to access shrinking resources. This so often leads to food insecurity, which is exactly what is happening this year.
People are becoming homeless, they do not have shelter to stay and they have less food to live. In our community, people do not depend on end of the month salaries, they depend on rainfall. We are seeing lives destroyed by climate impact that we didn’t create at all.
“We cannot leave anyone behind.”
People who are at the frontline of climate change are not the ones who are deciding how we can act on climate or how we can design a new world. All the international communities who are focusing on climate negotiations think firstly about the economy — how they can serve their own economies, how they can become more powerful. I found that so egoistic and so unrealistic that I bring my voice to let them know how the face of climate change looks like.
I explain to them how we are living in the same earth with them but getting a harder climate impact than them. I tell them that each decision that they are taking today, it is impacting the life of entire communities that are indigenous — communities who are saving 80% of the world’s biodiversity, who are living in the forests and savannas, glaciers, mountains. Those people who are protecting our oceans, who are thinking about the entire world — but who are left behind in every decision made about climate change.
We cannot leave anyone behind. Those who are excluded, left behind in every crisis, need to be taken into consideration and we need to build together a transformed world.
“When you get in the negotiating table, they think that you are not an expert.”
It’s so complicated because when you get in the negotiating table, they think that you are not an expert because you don’t have a PhD or you are not a professor, or you do not speak the language that they have, or you write English with some mistakes. They see you are wearing your traditional clothes, you are coming from your community, so it’s very hard.
What’s kept me there is I don’t care about that — what I care about is how I can make them understand my message, how I can show them that my people are suffering from their inaction, how I can guide them to take the right action that can change the life of not only my people but many other indigenous communities.
I am telling them that we are the victims, yes — but we are also the solutions. Because we know better than any technology that they will create how we can protect our trees, how we can restore degraded land, how we can use shrinking resources. We are still the best guardians of nature.
“My work is to make advocacy based on what is happening on the ground.”
I bring the specificity of the indigenous peoples, of the indigenous woman, of the indigenous girls — those who are left behind for long, for the communities who are the most vulnerable, for those who do not speak the same language, who did not go to school, who didn’t even get the chance to drink clean water.
I not only bring their voices, I live with these communities. Even if I come to New York and enter the UN and make a big statement in front of heads of state, when I go back home I go to my community. I go to stay with them under the trees, and move with them with the cattle, and drink the same water that’s coming from the river. So that means I understand. I live my real life with my community and I translate that into what is happening at the international level.
“If we protect nature, nature will protect us back.”
We need to turn from our home to nature. If we protect nature, nature will protect us back. So we need all to have this concept of living in harmony with nature, and that will help us to live in harmony between human beings and protect our planet.
