"Indigenous Peoples and local communities must lead the way to a just energy transition", 1 December 2023

When explosions coordinated by Rio Tinto, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, destroyed a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock shelter in Australia, Indigenous leaders took on the multinational corporation—and won.

Facing pressure from shareholders, parliamentary, and scrutiny from environmental and human rights activists like the London Mining Network, Rio Tinto apologised, paid restitution...

This story is both a cautionary tale and a charge for corporate leaders: Include Indigenous perspectives now, or wish you had later... companies can no longer disregard the respective rights and voices of local, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant tribal communities in tackling the most urgent business and environmental challenges...

Foremost among them: climate change. As leaders from government and the private sector convene for COP28 to find new frameworks for climate finance and a just energy transition, local and Indigenous voices must be front and centre. And there must be a verifiable commitment to respect and protect their rights...

Meaningful collaboration requires reckoning with centuries of exploitation and well-earned distrust. Governments, colonizers, and corporations have long claimed Indigenous land as effectively terra nullius, disregarding treaty rights and extracting resources with scant regard for the health of the land or the people who know it best...

We cannot fault Indigenous peoples for being sceptical of corporations that have harmed and displaced their communities for generations. That is why the private sector must approach potential partnerships with humility, offering these invaluable communities a real seat at the table and a meaningful stake in the financial success of joint projects...

For their part, climate financiers must ensure that their projects affirm Indigenous land rights and join government and philanthropy in supporting Indigenous proposals for sustainable development...

With these high stakes and high returns in mind, we urge our partners in the private sector to approach COP28 with an openness to collaboration... because to move forward with an energy transition that excludes Indigenous and other voices and perspectives is to replicate the disastrous system that produced this climate catastrophe in the first place...