Climate Restoration Needs Tribes
To achieve gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and meet UN climate targets, we believe tribal involvement is indispensable.
Indigenous voices bring to the carbon crisis a deep ethic of multi-generational stewardship. Has anyone offered a better North Star? Today’s climate choices will yield either profound consequences or a stronger, more resilient world—and perhaps a more prosperous one—for many generations.
We work to support tribes, whose vision and cultural training prepare them to act from a position of strength— inherited from ancestors, and answerable descendants into the deep future.
We cast no shade on capitalism. It is here to stay, with all its strengths and warts, and business has a big role to play. But seriously: right now, who do you want in the wheelhouse? Does anyone imagine the climate crisis can be tamed by “leaders” who curry obsessively to quarterly profits, who fret over TV viewer counts, who look no farther ahead than the next election?
In pragmatic terms, simple math and power mapping show that the tricky path to large-scale “climate restoration” requires substantial leadership from tribes, working in partnership with others of good will.
Wielding More Than Power
Tribes have proved to be a potent climate lobby, delivering decisive results in federal and state legislatures, in courts, and in the battlefield for voters’ hearts and minds. Amid bitter political deadlocks, tribes often bring the credibility and maturity to forge a “middle way,” delivering solutions that once seemed impossible. One example among many: In 2021 tribes shepherded into law the nation’s strongest carbon pricing policy, Washington’s Climate Commitment Act. That law will generate billions of dollars for climate projects, including funding for tribal mitigation and adaptation on the 10% of Washington lands owned and managed by tribes—and public procurement of carbon removal services.
Tribes bring more than political capital. Tribal governments own and manage vast lands and waters, including at least 20% of global land mass; this makes them key gatekeepers for many carbon projects. Tribal experience and skill in large-scale ecosystem restoration will be crucial for many nature-based carbon drawdown initiatives. As restoration leaders, tribes have demonstrated staying power–a critical ingredient for leadership in an emerging field like carbon removal. Tribes’ status as sovereign governments enables them to accelerate important projects, cutting through red tape. And tribal carbon credits command premium prices, due to tribes’ stature as environmental stewards and their access to lucrative international carbon markets. In short, tribes have great potential to define guiding principles for carbon removal—and to earn a big slice of a market that has been forecast to grow as large as $8.5 trillion by 2050.
Tribes know opportunity when they see it. Some tribes already are using revenues from nature-based carbon projects to buy back lands that historically were seized from them. Fawn Sharp, a Quinault Indian Nation leader and President of the National Congress of American Indians (who is also a key partner in this project), views carbon drawdown as a chance to weave together two core aspirations of Indian Country: the drive toward “economic sovereignty”—a rising cause among tribal leaders who are done waiting for federal promises to come true—and tribes’ long-nurtured mission to restore Indigenous lands, waters and authorities. “As with gaming, there is potential for carbon markets to transform Indian Country,” President Sharp told Indian Country Today.