Opportunity or Threat? Engaging with Nature-based Climate Solutions As Indigenous Peoples

Climate Justice

25 mars

Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) are often promoted as a leading approach for mitigating and adapting to climate change. While utilizing natural solutions to address the climate crisis may seem like an ideal path forward, the concept of natural climate solutions has increasingly been co-opted and used by industry and governments to continually delay meaningful climate action.

In our newest report, Nature-based Climate Solutions, we examine the growing NbCS movement and explore how it presents both risks and potential opportunities for Indigenous Peoples in so-called Canada and globally.

What are Nature-based Climate Solutions?

Nature-based Climate Solutions focus on capturing and storing carbon through land and ecosystem management practices. NbCS are often aimed at restoring and improving the management of our forests, wetlands, grasslands, and coastlines in order for these ecosystems to naturally capture and store carbon pollution. Some examples of NbCS include:

Organic Farming Practices
Land Restoration and Conservation
Forest and Wetland Management
Carbon-offsetting Projects

Are NbCS an Indigenous Concept?

NbCS are often marketed as upholding Indigenous values and relationships with lands and waters, but in practice they are rooted in Western scientific and environmental perspectives that primarily engage with nature as a resource and commodity.

Although Indigenous Peoples each have distinct teachings grounded in their different geographies, there is a shared understanding of the profound interconnection between the Earth and humans. Mainstream NbCSs demonstrate a very different worldview that views nature as existing for the benefit of humans, essentially removing humans from the concept of ‘nature’.

Fundamentally, it’s not an Indigenous concept, and it’s creating a separation that is present in Indigenous conceptions of our relationship to the natural world...when Indigenous peoples are talking about their actual relationship to the natural world, people don’t really understand. They think they understand, but they don’t really. From an Indigenous perspective, we’re the nature-based solution because we’re not separate from nature (D. McGregor)

While many governments, NGOs, and corporations try to position NbCSs as “Indigenous-led”, the reality is that they continue to prioritize systems of dispossession and exploitation. Real Indigenous-led solutions are already being practiced in our communities, yet these initiatives are rarely recognized or resourced under the mainstream NbCSs framework.

Only genuine respect for Indigenous sovereignty would allow communities to meaningfully participate in these approaches rather than being forced into colonial models that serve markets more than the well-being of lands, waters, and future generations.

If NbCS Protects Ecosystems, What’s the Issue?

For the last century, colonial governments and industries have sought access to Indigenous lands to extract oil, mine minerals, and cut down forests. Today, many of these same actors are returning to those lands, this time positioning them as sites to store carbon pollution and address a climate crisis they are largely responsible for creating.

While Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) are often framed as a way to protect ecosystems and reduce emissions, in practice, many of these approaches reproduce the same extractive logics they claim to solve. Rather than reducing emissions at the source, NbCS are frequently used to justify their continuation, allowing corporations and governments to offset pollution while maintaining business-as-usual operations.

This approach reflects a broader pattern identified throughout the report: mainstream NbCS are embedded within systems that prioritize carbon accounting, market growth, and resource extraction, rather than addressing the root causes of the climate crisis.

As a result, NbCS often replicate the harms associated with earlier conservation and carbon offsetting schemes, including:

the violation of Indigenous rights
the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples from decision-making
and the continued dispossession and commodification of Indigenous lands

These projects are frequently implemented without free, prior, and informed consent, reinforcing colonial control over Indigenous territories while presenting themselves as climate solutions.

At the same time, NbCS are commonly promoted to Indigenous communities as economic opportunities, which encourages participation in carbon markets or the “sequestration” of carbon on our lands. However, these opportunities often introduce new corporate interests into our territories, particularly from high-emitting industries seeking to offset their pollution rather than reduce it.

In this way, NbCS risks becoming another phase of extraction, in which, instead of oil, minerals, or timber, the focus shifts to carbon. At the same time, the underlying systems of exploitation remain unchanged.

NbCS, is it all bad?

Luckily, no. While many mainstream NbCS approaches pose real risks, Indigenous communities are also strategically engaging with them on their own terms, using these frameworks to reclaim jurisdiction, access resources, and advance Indigenous-led climate solutions.

When led by Indigenous Peoples, NbCS can support land back efforts, strengthen stewardship, and protect lands and waters.

But the difference is clear: the benefits of NbCS depend on who is leading and whose rights are being upheld. Without Indigenous leadership, consent, and governance, these approaches risk reinforcing the same systems they claim to challenge.