Building policies from the ground up: Panama’s indigenous strategy for climate change

Marina Campos
RF-US Program Manager

In response to pressure from indigenous groups, NGOs, and other grassroots organizations, several international agreements on climate change now recognize the importance of allowing indigenous peoples to be active participants in the design of climate change policies and programs.While this recognition is important, in reality, indigenous participation in the structuring of these policies and programs remains minimal worldwide.

In Panama, a nation of dense rainforests, indigenous peoples own more than a third of the country’s forested areas and also inhabit ecologically vulnerable areas near the coast and rivers. All of Panama’s indigenous peoples depend heavily on forest resources for their livelihoods. Thus, as the relationship between forests and climate change is well-established, it is important for the indigenous communities of Panama to develop climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies tailored to their needs and interests.

There are five indigenous groups in Panama: the Wounaan, Kuna, Emberá, Bri-bri, Ngöbe, and Bugle, organized into 11 traditional congresses. All of these traditional authorities together comprise a national coordination body known as COONAPIP (Coordinadora Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas de Panama). Rainforest Foundation-US is partnering with COONAPIP to develop Panama’s first indigenous climate change strategy.

I traveled to Panama in April to participate in a workshop which brought together traditional indigenous authorities and community members from all 5 indigenous groups. The workshop was part of the ongoing process of developing Panama’s indigenous climate change strategy, gathering opinions directly from the people about which initiatives relating to climate change mitigation, and more importantly to climate change adaptation, should take place and where. This collaborative process ensures that the resulting strategy will be firmly based in indigenous environmental knowledge, and that it will be implemented by the communities themselves in partnership with the national governmental and international programs.

It was very rewarding for me to see these communities’ commitment to the policy process and to see them using their unique knowledge of their environment to identify the most vulnerable ecosystems and to come up with solutions for addressing climate change which take into account traditional knowledge and practices, not to mention individual indigenous community needs.

For the first time, rather than waiting to see what programs and policies are created for them, the indigenous peoples of Panama are taking matters into their own hands to ensure their voices will be heard in the policy development process. Armed with the strategy developed through the workshop process, they will be able to contribute actively to the national and international climate initiatives that, once implemented, will directly affect their lives and their forests. For the most part, up until now, climate change programs and policies have been designed behind closed doors by governments and international agencies, and the majority of these initiatives has not taken into account the opinions, knowledge, or needs of indigenous peoples. An indigenous leader said to me regarding climate change strategies: “We want to build our own, based on our traditional knowledge of the forest and our understanding of climate change.” And this is precisely what the Rainforest Foundation’s work in Panama hopes to make possible!