Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation (PACT)

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs) are long-standing, and effective, stewards of rural ecosystems. Their traditional systems of stewardship often emphasize gender equity, respect for human diversity and biodiversity, intergenerational relationships, learning from the past, and cultivating shared responsibility within and across communities. IP&LCs have been and remain at the forefront of institutional innovations and sustainable development solutions. Yet, they are among the most vulnerable to racial and gender-based discrimination and violence as well as climate and biodiversity collapse. They continue to be on the bottom rung of economic development, suffer the suppression of the rights and freedoms of women, girls, and persons of non-binary genders, and face ongoing political marginalization and dispossession of their lands and resources. 

Unfortunately, the international architecture for promoting sustainable development, instigated more than seven decades ago with the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions, has proven inadequate to support or learn from these critical actors, and in many ways actively undermines their power, resources, and sovereignty. At the same time, it is now widely recognized that this architecture is incapable of addressing the more broadly recognized global challenges of biodiversity loss, climate change, inequality, and political-economic polarization. Indeed, the international development architecture - largely an extension of western colonial mindsets and patriarchy, was not designed to consider these challenges nor to pursue strategies to deal with them. Over-reliance on these institutions already puts at risk reversal of gains towards human rights, democratic governance, human wellbeing, and peace and security. Long standing governmental neglect, the disempowerment of women, girls, and persons of non-binary genders, the abuse of marginalized communities, and the pervasive commitment of the powerful to maintain the status quo, undermine progress on all these global crises. By ignoring the fundamental problems of injustice and inequality their climate and conservation solutions further distract from the development of effective solutions and compound the problems. Powerful private sector institutions benefit from current institutional structures and have few incentives to pursue reforms. The willingness of large conservation organizations and international agricultural and development research institutions to accept the status quo further inhibits meaningful change.

There are, however, grounds for optimism. IP&LCs have organized to implement path-breaking social, political, and environmental initiatives. Their activism and social mobilization have led to their formal recognition and strengthening of their territorial rights and claims. Their concepts of being an integral part of nature and treating as sacred the proven tenets of social equity and environmental sustainability are taking hold and forcing the rethinking of science, governance structures, and economic development models. Their rights to land, culture, and self-determination are recognized in a growing number of national and international laws and agreements. New sources of support are creating opportunities for systemic impact. Such support can catalyze long-deferred transformations.

These reasons for optimism also demonstrate the steep costs of conventional approaches. Bretton-Woods institutions helped reduce poverty for some. But inattention to inequality and authoritarianism threatens social peace and democratic survival. International agricultural research institutions helped increase food supply. But the focus on capital-intensive technologies generated extraordinary environmental losses, failed to support Indigenous knowledge and institutions, young scientists, and local public goods, and instigated unprecedented struggles over land, carbon, biodiversity, food, and subsistence. International conservation organizations successfully pushed for expansive territorial earmarks for biodiversity and international carbon markets. But their territorial success evicted and excluded local Peoples and their market approach often undermines Indigenous land rights and sovereignty and puts at risk rights to their other natural resources. The net effect of this approach is that the remaining Indigenous territories, and their defenders, are increasingly targeted by corporate developers and environmentalists alike, leading to ever higher levels of abuse and violence. Climate change and biodiversity research has increased awareness of catastrophic climate and ecosystem collapse. But increased awareness has not reduced emissions and inequalities, nor protected ecosystems and biodiversity.

Across national and international systems, colonial knowledge paradigms have precluded effective and widespread engagement with IP&LCs, including the specific knowledge held by women and persons of non-binary genders. Such paradigms support (and are supported by) the international architecture for development, conservation, and sustainability that works through alliances between inter-governmental organizations, state agencies and private corporations. These systems reinforce state power and their coercive capacities, sustaining the marginalization of historically disenfranchised Peoples. The institutional silos and fragmented thinking also enable these parties to absolve themselves from the negative effects of these systems on IP&LC lands, territories, and their human rights. They must give way to more just, equitable, and inclusive worldviews for the world to achieve the climate, environmental, and development actions and outcomes necessary for our collective survival.

IP&LCs are not just the target of do-good, paternalistic policies. They are agents of their own, with collective rights and capacities to freely determine political, economic, social, and cultural means toward the achievement of global transformations. Indigenous Peoples have had to develop strategies for navigating some of the most oppressive features of colonialism, capitalism, and other discriminatory systems. International organizations, government agencies, and market-based actors need to learn from and honor the guidance and consent of those whose capacities they want to build, and recognize and accommodate alternative visions of nature, ways of knowing, and pathways for doing. Promoting IP&LC knowledge paradigms and customary institutions, and reconfiguring conventional structures that do not serve disadvantaged groups, is necessary to strengthen social justice, reduce inequalities, support youth development, improve conservation, and promote inclusive democratic governance.

Pursuing such a vision requires building on innovative initiatives underway that are already generating impacts. IP&LCs have demonstrated their irreplaceable role in ecosystem conservation and advancing women’s rights. They have created proven models of compensation for carbon capture, ecosystem security, and building sustainable rural economies. Their strategies for mobilizing youth are realizing the promise of grassroots change. Amplifying these voices is of foundational importance for equitable action. Some private philanthropies and global leaders are beginning to invest in effective IP&LC-led mechanisms. The moment is ripe for the transformation of global development, climate, and sustainability architecture to secure a just common future. Yet, without amplification, existing accomplishments risk remaining relatively invisible, and vulnerable to rollback by governments. They also risk capture by existing international organizational and corporate interests. The ravages of COVID-19 and the rising tide of authoritarianism threaten Indigenous and local futures. Many promising initiatives and organizations do not now have the limelight, support, or connections to fully establish or scale system transformations.

PACT will accelerate and scale strategic action to transform international systems essential to advancing sustainable development, thereby achieving: (i) inclusive sustainability and development, (ii) reduced racial, gender-based, and economic inequalities, (iii) more effective climate and conservation actions, (iv) reinvigorated democratic systems that are more responsive and accountable to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and (v) stronger IP&LC organizations, networks and supporting institutions. To do so, it will: identify promising initiatives and change agents;, convene key actors to support, uplift the knowledge and leadership of women and gender non-binary persons;, discover, and develop more effective solutions, instigate, and undertake necessary analyses to develop more effective solutions;, and pursue strategic actions to strengthen institutional innovations for system transformations. PACT seeks to be proactive, dynamic, and reciprocal. The core partners are central only in terms of convening, not in terms of power, thought, or action.

1. Identify strategic opportunities for transformation. PACT will identify systems where a) there is demand and promise for transformation, b) the potential for change can be realized with strategic, catalytic support, and c) engagement provides consequential value addition. PACT will initially focus on contributing to the transformation of four international systems: 
   1. Conservation Models and Practice:  A growing movement of Indigenous and community-led conservation has found support from some donors. This shift needs consolidation, a stronger set of supporting institutions, and scaling up for transformation. PACT will support strategic analyses and boundary-spanning alliances between movements of Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations focused on seizing political windows of opportunity.
   2. Support for IP&LC-Led Research and Action: International support for Indigenous and community actors, their science, their research institutions, and their capacity building remains miniscule. PACT will work to dramatically scale up support for emerging Indigenous-led research and advocacy institutions and strengthen the science and advocacy capacity of young Indigenous and community scientists and leaders. PACT will also connect networks of Indigenous-led universities and research institutions in the global north with those in the south for shared learning and to raise visibility and financial support.
   3. Climate Finance and Compensation: International initiatives aiming to reduce emissions from landscapes have largely failed, in part because they have ignored Indigenous and local perspectives, the focus on carbon and credits often actively threatens the broader land and resource rights of IP&LCs, and the discussions around adaptation and Loss and Damage have largely focused on physical infrastructure. PACT will advance the indispensable role of IP&LCs in terrestrial mitigation, use their proven compensation models to contest dominant mechanisms under implementation, support territorial sovereignty and stewardship of IP&LC lands, and support IP&LC initiatives to shape the Loss and Damage mechanisms to restore Indigenous rights and resilience. 
   4. Sustainability Education: Conventional definitions of sustainability and sustainability curricula are outdated. There is growing recognition that sustainability is about transformation: of market, societies, politics, and cultures and addressing the global crises of climate change, inequality, and injustice. Trained professionals are needed to transform systems towards a more sustainable future. PACT will promote actions for achieving systemic change in sustainability education from local to international arenas. 
2. Convene change agents, conduct strategic analyses and communications. For each of the systems identified, PACT will identify promising initiatives already underway, relevant thinkers and change agents. It will connect strategic actors, conduct baseline analyses to facilitate awareness and advocacy, create communities of action to support critical coalition actors with ideas and information, and identify sources of potential support. 
3. Support promising initiatives, action, and impact. PACT will support promising initiatives and communities of action and help mobilize funding. Each community of action will build alliances with the capacity for expansion and renewal. Throughout, PACT will build on its core principles of equitable relations with IP&LCs, social entrepreneurs, and youth. It will seek ideas for initiating transformation and provide support and training. It will encourage novel, co-designed solutions for learning and sharing with an emphasis on strategic action. Additional analyses and catalytic resource investments will help mobilize new networks and network entrepreneurs.

In 2013, AMAN called for a new collaboration between Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and international allies for fundamental change in the international institutional architecture for development. A decade on, in February 2023, the founding leaders of the alliance met in Michigan to create the PACT. This group of founders uniquely combines leading scholars and activists from the global south and north. They will incrementally reach out to and include other organizations who bring complementary value to join and collaborate. The founders established an interim secretariat anchored in SEAS, developed a work plan for 2023, and initiated activities to advance the transformation of each of the four priority systems listed above.

The PACT Position on Terrestrial Carbon Markets: Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, and Trade in Terrestrial Carbon Markets: Time to Recognize Their Rights, Support Their Organizations, and Impose a Moratorium on Terrestrial Carbon Trade.  

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