Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an indigenous woman from the Mbororo pastoralist community of Chad, globally known for her impactful activism in protection of the environment and of indigenous peoples’ rights. She is coordinator of the Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), a community-based organization focused on promoting the rights of girls and women in the Mbororo community and inspiring leadership and advocacy in environmental protection. Hindou is also Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), Co-Chair of the Pan-African Climate Change Justice Alliance (PACJA), Policy Board Member of the United Nations Indigenous Peoples Partnership (UNIPP), and Coordinator of the Indigenous People’s Pavilion for COP21, COP22, and COP23. In 2017, she was recognised as one of the 14 National Geographic ‘Emerging Explorers’.

Hi Hindou, it’s an honour to welcome you as the first indigenous voice on Circular Conversations. For the occasion, let’s start with a quick intro.

My name is Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, I am from Chad, from an indigenous community called the Mbororo pastoralists, who are nomadic people living in Chad - across Sahel, Savanna and up to the tropical forest. It depends on the season where we are. I am coordinating an organisation called Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), which works on two programs. First, protection and promotion of women rights and indigenous peoples’ rights. And, second, protection of the environment through climate change, biodiversity and desertification conventions. In our projects, we try to link what’s happening on the ground to the places where the international decisions are taken.

An overarching mission in all your initiatives is the empowerment of indigenous peoples’ voice in the climate change debate and international decision-making processes. A first step in this mission is to raise global awareness about the catastrophic impact that climate change is having on indigenous peoples around the world. May you give us a first-hand picture about that?

Climate change is impacting all indigenous peoples around the world. We are about 5% of the world population, but we preserve 80% of the world biodiversity. For us, that means that we all depend on the ecosystem we live in. You have indigenous peoples living in any environment from forests, to mountains, glaciers, and deserts. Our life is linked to the environment—we are dependent upon it—most of us are fishermen, hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, farmers, all in the traditional way of living. That’s what allows us to live in harmony with our environment.

“We are about 5% of the world population, but we preserve 80% of the world biodiversity”

When climate change started impacting the world, it impacted us the first. We have seen our environment destroyed. The forests are being cut down, the glaciers are melting, the desert is advancing, the mountains are becoming more dry. For us, it is our direct environment that is impacted and it is our identity that is changing. If you are living in a forest and then they cut the forest down to transform the place into plantations, you can’t live anymore from what you were earning from the forest. Similarly, if you are from the Savanna, your life is dependent on the water from the rain and the grass for the pasture. With climate change, the rain is not coming regularly, the pasture is not there, so at the end of the day there are communities struggling to get access to water and food.

An impact that is far from being merely economic.

It’s impacting our way of life, and our identity. We are still 100% nomadic, but we also have many semi-nomadic and sedentary indigenous people who have lost their cattle, have lost their way of life and don’t know what to do. They have to sit in one village without knowing which activities to engage in, because they didn’t grow up used to doing town activities, such as commerce. That changes the identity of people.

You now find many indigenous people living and working in a town that won’t say ‘I am from this community’, because they feel very marginalised. They don’t speak the language anymore because other people would discriminate against them. At the end of the day, they lose their identity, their culture, their spirituality and, finally, they become no one. They can’t simply jump on another identity and they can’t conserve their own one, because it is not anymore respected. All of this is due to the way climate changing is impacting their life.

For us the impact is beyond the economic, it’s beyond the money that people can talk about. We are losing our environment and, with that, we are losing everything that we are. And I am not only talking about indigenous communities. When we lose, the world is losing. We are keeping the world biodiversity balance and if we are not there, then the balance is lost. The clean air and clean water that other people are benefitting from right now, won’t be there anymore. We had a study in Chad showing that from 1909 to now, we already had an increase in 1.5 degrees Celsius. That’s already huge, we are now fighting to keep it no more than 1.5 degrees, but we are already at 1.5. The next ten years for us are going to be a disaster and have a very dramatic impact on our life - if we don’t take action now.

“We are losing our environment and—with that—we are losing everything that we are”

This depicts a very dramatic picture of how deep the impact of climate change is for indigenous peoples. Now, I’d like to get to the other side of the story: indigenous peoples not as victims, but as owners of solutions. How can indigenous knowledge help us—as a global community—to find a path of ecological balance and regeneration of our ecosystems?

It’s already confirmed that indigenous people’s knowledge can be helpful to do that. If you go to tropical forests around the world, which are kept by indigenous peoples, they have the most diverse ecosystems. Better than a national park where you have guards with a gun protecting the ecosystem. We already know how to find this balance and how to maintain it and live with it; that’s the most important benefit for the whole world.

As an example, you can have a fire propagating across the forest, but you don’t see that it’s threatening people’s lives, because we know how to manage it and how to protect it. Few months ago when there were huge fires in Australia, they called the country’s indigenous women and asked ‘how can you help us?’ They ended up protecting entire communities from the fire. There are a lot of benefits already coming from indigenous communities - the problem is that the nexus is often invisible. When people in the town can breathe clear air, it’s because of the forests that we are protecting and regenerating. They might not see it or value it, but we know the role of forests in absorbing carbon dioxide and other gasses.

“There are a lot of benefits already coming from indigenous communities - the problem is that the nexus is often invisible”

All this indigenous knowledge can be very helpful to the global communities. It can help in climate adaptation and to build up resilience for the communities. We know how to restore the land and make it fertile in a natural way. My people taking cattles from one place to the other is meant to give a break for nature to naturally regenerate, without putting any chemicals. That’s a big benefit. Nowadays the developed world talks a lot about the value of organic food. We know how to make organic food, because that’s the only way we produce, without contaminating with chemicals our water, land and rivers.

These are great learnings for the new direction we need to undertake as human society. For this knowledge exchange to happen on a global scale, however, we need an open space for dialogue where indigenous peoples feel treated with respect and feel safe to share their knowledge. How can we create such a trusting environment to co-create solutions together?

I think there is a need to rebuild trust. Indigenous people have been—for a long time—the victims of researchers and modern scientists telling us that we are nothing and we don’t know anything. That they are the best because they have the technology and know how to manage computers, or because they have electricity. Reducing this gap for marginalization can be a first step towards creating a better and safer place for exchange. Recognising that indigenous peoples’ knowledge is very valuable—at least at the same level of modern science—can also help to value the knowledge and create a safe place to exchange.

It would also help to recognize the ownership of the knowledge to the communities and be clear about the benefits the communities will have if they share their knowledge. For a long time, we have been welcoming researchers who come to the communities and typically stay for one or two years, and then they write a report saying ‘oh, I made a discovery!’ No, you didn’t make a discovery. This knowledge belongs to the communities, who use it for survival, not to earn money from the war. All this recognition can help us to create a safe place for discussion.

Recognition and inclusion. Do we have international agreements in place that facilitate that?

Yes, we have the frameworks for that. We have the Paris Agreement, which recognises that indigenous peoples’ knowledge is very valuable to climate adaptation and mitigation. However, even if we create a platform for this knowledge exchange, it is still the case that we are not the decision-makers. But if we have value to add, then we must also take the decisions. It can’t anymore be that we come and talk about how we live, but then others take decisions on our behalf. With our knowledge, we have to be the decision-makers of how we can transform this world together. We need to play this role as actors, not as spectators sitting behind those that will decide for us.

“We have to be the decision-makers of how we can transform this world together”

We also have the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that recognised that Indigenous peoples’ knowledge can be very helpful to land restoration. Yes, that is really important, but how can we walk side by side with scientists without them telling us ‘we have to confirm this piece of knowledge’. Who are they to confirm knowledge we accumulated in thousands of years? It can’t be that you have to confirm, simply because it’s oral knowledge, it’s not written knowledge. The best they can do is just absorb this knowledge and move forward together.

Can they see what all the technology, science applications and industrial revolution has led us to? To climate change, biodiversity loss, more than half of species going extinct, desertification, global pandemics. Did they confirm this knowledge before? Maybe they did, yes, but they didn’t confirm it in the right way. Right now, they must just build trust in indigenous peoples’ knowledge from thousands of years, put knowledge together and walk forward. We are trying to do it, and with some scientists it’s working really well.

As you said, you have to be actors and not simple spectators. What frameworks do we require to put indigenous peoples at the forefront of the international decision-making process?

I think we also have a framework for that. We have the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), that has been adopted on the 13th September 2007. So, it’s really a long time ago, and it has been adopted by all the member states at the General Assembly. Also those who were resisting, have now adopted it, like the US and Canada. There is also the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), which gives indigenous peoples the right to give or withhold consent to a project that might affect them or their territories. So, they can use these frameworks to build better policies.

At the international level, if they apply the UNDRIP and the FPIC to every decision they take, they can see what decisions might harm indigenous peoples, and they can avoid doing that. What is still missing, however, is the translation of these agreements to the national level - the implementation of legislation changes. They just need to integrate what has been stipulated at the international level at the national level, where they actually take decisions.

Big smiles and pompous announcements at international conferences, but inaction and lack of change at the national level, where actual decisions are taken?

Most of the time, countries are happy to join conventions and sign agreements, but when they go back home they don’t transcribe this to a national law, and do not respect the integration of all the rights. They say they have sovereign power. But that doesn’t matter, they must include indigenous peoples’ informed consent. If indigenous peoples say no, there is a reason. Just stop, don’t do it, because it’s going to harm you and many communities. We don’t have the same culture, language or knowledge, so you can just accept that when we say no is no, when we say yes is yes. This kind of legislation and policies can help all of us to work better in building the trust among us to move forward.

“We don’t have the same culture, language or knowledge, so you can just accept that when we say ‘no’ is no, when we say ‘yes’ is yes”

You are a living example of how the empowerment of indigenous women and their knowledge can contribute to solving our global challenges. What’s the role indigenous women have for the health and prosperity of their communities?

Indigenous women have a lot to contribute. If you come to indigenous communities , everywhere around the world, you can see the role that women are playing. We have already defined a governance system that is different from the western one - of course women have the same rights and they are very important. Women are the first ones to wake up and the last ones to go to sleep in many communities. They are the ones that take care of men, children, and elderly people, because they are the best ones who know how to do that. They are also the ones that educate the young boys and girls by passing the traditions since they are very young. They are already playing this leadership role, which maybe is not written anywhere, but it’s a natural pattern.

Let me give you an example. In my community, when you have a young boy that is 2 years old, he already has a chicken to run after. When he gets to the age of 5, he can run after sheeps. At age 7, he can take hundreds of cattles and go and graze them for the entire day. And from the beginning, he is married, and his wife plays a very big role, by taking care of him and helping him. These are the same young girls that share about traditional knowledge, traditional medicine, and how to live in harmony with the environment making the most out of it.

Has climate change been influencing the role of women inside communities?

When climate events severely impact a community, men always leave the communities to go into town and look for food and other necessities. It takes them one month or even several months of walking before they can come back to the community. During those times, women are true innovators, they use all the possibilities and knowledge they have, to build the society, keep them healthy, keep them eat and keep them safe. They play the role of both women and men. That’s why it’s important since the design phase of every project to include women, because their presence can give a better sustainability for the long-term of the project.

*Hindou with women and children from Mbororo community in Chad (Photo credits: Ami Vitale)*

In indigenous communities, we have always used women, youth, elders all together. All of these are part of our communities and—differently from UN projects—we don’t need a quota to make sure everybody is represented. Everybody is already involved. This is key in allowing the transfer of knowledge from the elder to the younger, from the women to the children. All our generations are inter-linked.

As a final question, you have a very vivid knowledge of two environments that are fairly different. On one side, your indigenous community in Chad. On the other, conferences around the world with global political leaders. How do you balance the two worlds and what do you get out of this combination?

I grew up between my community in Chad and towns around the world. I have met presidents, Hollywood stars, and fellow indigenous brothers and sisters from other communities. I reconcile these two words with the fact that I am a human; we are all humans. As human beings, we are just one species of nature. I don’t feel like we have human power over the other species and decide for them. And, as one species, we all have something in common. You can be a president or an indigenous person, you need air to breath. You can be everyone in the world, you need water to drink. And you can be everyone in the world, you need food to eat. So, why are we different?

We are not different, we are all the same. We are the same as bees, bears, insects - we are all part of nature. We are just one species and we have to learn how to live with each other in respect and how to exchange. The one thing we maybe have more than the rest of the species is that we are smarter. But if we think we are smart, we need to use that intelligence to build better, to live in harmony with all others, not harming them. That’s why I have no problem in talking to a president and then the minute after talking to a taxi driver, and the minute after to some indigenous communities. All these people are the same and need to have the same objective: how can we sustain our world and leave it a better world for the next generations to come? And, how can the present generation live in harmony?