Tino Rangatiratanga is the Key to Climate Justice in Aotearoa
Tamatha Paul | Ngāti Awa, Waikato Tainui | she/her
Organisers and activists everywhere in Aotearoa were shook when the Tāmaki branch of School Strikes 4 Climate announced they were disbanding, claiming they were a “racist, white-dominated space”. This came as no surprise to indigenous, brown, and black organisers across the country who have experienced racism and classism within the environmental movement for a long time. Lots of people asked me “why does it matter who leads these movements when climate change is happening now?”
Yes, climate change is happening all around us right now. I struggled to make it through the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It told us that our previous predictions around global warming were, in fact, conservative and it’s a whole lot worse than we could have expected.
It is undeniable that human activities are responsible for climate change.
The years 2011-20 represented the hottest decade in over 125,000 years.
Freak flooding and extreme weather conditions are set to increase. We’ve already seen some devastating, deadly floods in China, the United States of America, and Europe this year alone.
Global ice caps and ice sheets are melting at an alarming rate, with the moana absorbing 20-30% of all carbon acidification. This is resulting in ocean acidification, which is having an impact on all ocean life, not to mention precious kaimoana!
Global Mean Sea Level Rise will definitely increase by 0.7-1.1 METRES by 2300.
In Aotearoa, the North Island will endure sustained, severe droughts. In the South Island, extreme heavy rainfall events will cause endless flooding.
Worst of all, it is the poorest people in the world, who have contributed the least to this catastrophe, that will experience the earliest and most devastating impacts of climate change.
Climate change was founded upon imperialism and fuelled by global capitalism. The extraction of fossil fuels from the earth has happened through the violent, forced displacement of indigenous people from their ancestral whenua. Islands throughout Polynesia have been looted to mine phosphate which is then used in farming (likely on stolen land) which not only significantly contributes to climate change, but significantly degrades our waterways. Climate change due to capitalism is expedited through the exploitation of black and brown people’s labour.
As well as this, there are some problematic and straight-up dangerous views in the climate activism space. There are people who genuinely believe that the key to solving climate change is banning all cars except electric vehicles, shutting down all the power plants and farms overnight, sterilising poor people thereby preventing them from having children, and banning refugees and migrants from coming into the country.
How are cleaners supposed to get to work? How are whānau supposed to put food on the table? Why should we put an end to our whakapapa by not having children? How could we turn our backs on people who have been forced from their homelands? It is morally reprehensible for marginalised peoples to be scapegoated by those who have benefitted the most from capitalism. So why is it important that indigenous, black, and disabled activists lead the movement against climate change? We have been most deeply affected by the acts of violence that have created human-induced climate change in the first place. The stakes are higher for us because we will be hit earliest and hardest by the impacts of climate change. We know how to resist capitalism and imperialism because our very survival depends on it. Most of all, we have known this whenua, cared for and healed her as our own Mother, since time immemorial.
My tīpuna left clues weaved through pūrākau, pakiwaitara, and ingoa tūturu which reminds me that the natural environment is something we learn to live in harmony with, not something that is there to be managed. They left tikanga that helped us to correct our own behaviours and interactions with the world around us. My tīpuna would spend hours, days, weeks, years in wānanga, observing the world around us. Decisions would be made in order to yield enough for the whole iwi, and subsequently, discipline would be exercised to allow for replenishment. Our tīpuna, both tangata whenua and tangata tiriti, left us a lot of clues as to how we might walk backwards into the future in order to radically reimagine the challenges ahead of us and the opportunities that await.
At a constitutional level, we must entrench Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This is because tino rangatiratanga and the rights to self-determination of hapū across the motu is absolutely critical in the protection of our natural environment. We cannot leave environmental justice up to whoever the government of the day is. We need non-derogable, inalienable rights for the whenua and those who care for it. An indigenous approach to the “management” of any “resource” must be underpinned by manaakitanga. That is, everybody has everything they need and the whenua has tikanga set around it to allow it to replenish. It’s actually not that long ago that we lived like that here in Aotearoa.
We can already see tikanga Māori emerging in the colonial justice system; in the Ellis case, tikanga Māori was recognised by the courts to exist and be applicable within the common law. Not to mention the granting of legal personhood to Te Urewera Forest and Te Awa Tupua. Māori leaders are innovating these changes within the law, it only makes sense that Māori lead our climate movement, as we understand the potency of tikanga Māori for fundamental change.
We’ve got to stop shaming people for their individual choices. Most people will make the choices that are convenient and affordable for them, so we have to advocate to make the choices that are best for the climate the most accessible choice. We are a wealthy country and there are enough resources to increase the choices available to people (hint: tax the rich, stop building highways). For example, people should be given more choice to live in warm, secure housing situated close to where they work; accessible, affordable and reliable public transport; safe walking and cycling infrastructure; those who rely on private vehicles such as disabled or elderly people should be able to move around a lot easier; whānau who rely on jobs in polluting industries should be able to transition into green jobs like wetland restoration, native forest replanting, or building the infrastructure we will need for the future.
As Māori, young people, renters, students—we are often told that if only we all voted we would be the most powerful voting bloc. But voting every three years isn’t gonna cut it. We have to get political. We have to be well-organised enough to match the money that the most powerful polluters have. We have to be actively anti-racist and apply a structural lens over climate change. We have to sign petitions, make submissions and call on our local representatives. We have to join marches and support activists doing the mahi. We have to have challenging conversations with our friends and family. We have to fight for our ability to survive on this planet. To give the final word to my Polynesian tūākana in the climate movement: we are not drowning, we are fighting. X