With the 2021 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 26th Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP26) just around the corner Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, the Indigenous Environmental Network partnered with Diné artist Liv Barney to explain carbon pricing and how it commodifies the land, sky, and water– continuing a legacy of colonization.

New forms of energy legislation with false incentives are designed to encourage the expansion of extraction and industrial-scale development on and near our Indigenous lands and territories by outside corporate interests. Once again, the dominant system is putting economics first, over our Indigenous values, duties and responsibilities to protect the environment, ecosystems, and sacred and historical and cultural areas and the water of life.

Carbon pricing schemes put a price on the air we breathe violating Mother Earth and Father Sky.

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Systems that price carbon continue colonialism by perpetuating theft of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and territories, especially in the global South where Indigenous Peoples have been protecting lands and forests for thousands of years.

Land prices can be driven up and threaten the rights of Indigenous Peoples

Carbon pricing has a simple goal: to make it easy for governments and corporations to falsely claim they have reduced emissions.