Target 4: Sustainable production and consumption

Progress towards Target 4 has been limited.¹ Since 1980, the consumption of materials per person has risen 15 per cent and over the past three decades global extraction of biomass, fossil fuels, minerals, and metals has risen by approximately 80 per cent.² As a result, industrial agriculture and the extractive industries have expanded further into IPLC lands and territories, with serious ecological and social consequences, including loss of species and ecosystems; pollution of waterways; and widespread displacement and destitution involving severe human rights violations.³

Awareness of the dangers posed by unchecked production and consumption has come together into a dedicated target under the Sustainable Development Goals.⁴ Attention, however, has been focused largely on consumer choice and improving efficiency on a product-by-product basis rather than considering the systemic changes necessary to keep within safe ecological limits.⁵ In this context, the ecologically sensitive approaches of IPLCs to production and consumption, some of which are discussed in this chapter, are instructive. These approaches, however, have been insufficiently supported by governments and other actors with vested interests in maintaining the economic status quo or the resource extraction potential of IPLC lands and territories.⁶

“The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh, spiritual leader, Vietnam

The widespread indigenous concept of buen vivir (living well in harmony with nature) is based on norms related to ecological and cultural balance that discourage overconsumption and underpins the small ecological footprints of many indigenous societies.⁷ IPLCs often promote genetic diversity in their local production systems in the form of traditional crop varieties and traditional livestock breeds⁸, often purposefully propagated by women or by men, which makes these systems much more resilient to pests and natural disasters. Customary sustainable use of wild resources is also a common part of land use planning and territorial management. And some IPLCs are striving to improve international commodity certification schemes such as the Forest Stewardship Council and voluntary supply chain initiatives, including for the purpose of greater accountability.

Local sustainable production

The scale of smallholder contributions to global production is often overlooked. When multiplier effects are taken into account, they account for 12–35 per cent of global economic output, or US$8.7–US$25.9 trillion per year.⁹ Moreover, when they are based on secure land rights and indigenous and local knowledge systems, local production systems provide far greater local social and economic benefits, and tend to be far more favourable to biodiversity, in comparison with mainstream models of production and consumption.¹⁰

A concerted shift towards supporting these kinds of systems to persist and spread would transform production systems towards greater sustainability.¹¹

• Traditional coffee farms in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico, are reservoirs of biodiversity. They are also important sources of materials for handicrafts and local cuisine, which is promoted in inter-village food fairs organised by local youths.¹²
• Yanesha indigenous women in the central Amazonian region of Peru have been developing strategies to recover knowledge about natural dyes and native coloured cotton (bespan in Yanesha), which is strengthening their initiatives from a territorial management perspective and improving their artistic production of clothes and other items for commercial purposes within the fair-trade framework.
• The Botanical Products Association of Liberia supports better livelihoods for its members through the development of non-timber forest products, and facilitates members’ engagement in policy debates on sustainable forest management.¹³
• In response to the increasing promotion of agro-chemicals and the threat of expansion of agribusiness and industrial plantations, in 2016 the Alliance of the Indigenous Peoples of the Highlands self-declared the Krayan highlands in Borneo as an area for organic and traditional agriculture. In 2019, the Head of the Nunukan regency issued a decree for the preservation and development of the traditional agricultural practices, including the importance of agrobiodiversity of rice and other crops in the Krayan Highlands. This is a formal government recognition of this area as their ‘territory of life’.¹⁴
• The Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand offer an example of local sustainable land management. Their regional tribal (iwi) environmental management plans bring together spiritual and natural resource concerns in overall environmental governance, and incorporate the concept of guardianship over the sky, the sea, the land and sacred places (kaitaikitanga).

International standards

“What do we mean by the term sustainability? The palm oil industry has not dealt with many of the past and present violations of community rights by agribusiness developments. It is not enough to create voluntary certification schemes, while we continue to suffer land grabs and the ongoing violation of human rights.”

— Franky Samperante, Pusaka, Indonesia

IPLCs have been working with civil society partners to limit the impacts on their lands of industrial agriculture, mining and hydrocarbon extraction through community-based environmental and social monitoring, advocacy, and representation on voluntary certification bodies, such as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). On paper, many such certification schemes have impressive requirements in relation to respect for human and indigenous rights and environmental and social impacts; however, their implementation commonly has serious shortcomings. For example, the RSPO requires companies to carry out land tenure assessments, assess high conservation values (including biodiversity, cultural and livelihoods values), and put in place integrated conservation and land use plans before clearing any land;¹⁵ however, in many cases these measures have been omitted and very few such plans have been developed. Most certification schemes are still top-down processes that marginalise IPLC perspectives and values.¹⁶

IPLCs are critical partners in monitoring certified operations on the ground and drawing attention to cases of non-compliance. However, companies who break the rules have in some cases simply withdrawn from certification to avoid penalties (see Box 7). Clearly, voluntary supply-chain initiatives alone are not enough to enact the changes needed to create sustainable production systems that conserve biodiversity and respect the rights of IPLCs.

• IPLCs should maintain, strengthen and expand their modes of sustainable production and consumption.
• Governments and relevant actors should support IPLCs to develop, implement and scale up local sustainable modes of production and management, based on secure collective land rights.
• Governments and relevant actors should ensure that all supply-chain actors are subject to, and adhere to, clear human-rights and environmental regulation, with clear mechanisms for access by IPLCs, including to accountability mechanisms and complaints processes.
• Governments and relevant actors should facilitate inclusion of IPLC knowledge and experience in establishing the policy framework for sustainable production and consumption in the overall strategy towards the 2050 vision of “living in harmony with nature”, encompassing SDG 12 and other relevant international policy guidance.¹⁷

• Anderson, C., Bruil, J., Chappell, M. J., Kiss, C. and Pimbert, M. P. (2019) ‘From transition to domains of transformation: Getting to sustainable and just food systems through agroecology’, Sustainability 11(19).
• FAO (2019) The state of the world’s biodiversity for food and agriculture. Bélanger, J and D. Pilling (Editors). Rome: FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Assessments. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/CA3129EN/ca3129en.pdf