The world continues to discuss the urgency of addressing the climate crisis by transitioning to renewable energy — albeit with decreasing political support in recent months. Yet, the strong connection between renewable energy production and Indigenous Peoples remains largely unknown or rather ignored. Policymakers and many businesses fail to recognize that Indigenous Peoples are one group of affected rightsholders and renewable energy targets cannot be reached without the consent and support of Indigenous Peoples.
This is because more than half of the minerals essential for the green transition are located in or near Indigenous territories. However, many businesses involved in renewable energy and critical mineral production remain unaware of this reality—let alone how to engage with Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples, who have contributed little to the climate crisis, are often expected to bear its costs, facing significant adverse impacts on their rights and traditional ways of life.
In this article, we outline key facts about Indigenous Peoples and their rights and discuss how businesses must engage with them to ensure their activities are both environmentally and socially sustainable. Specifically, we examine past pitfalls in the extractives industry, explore lessons for renewable energy and automotive companies, and highlight why obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous Peoples is both a legal requirement and a business imperative.
Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and the Importance of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)
There are 477 million Indigenous Peoples across more than 5,000 cultures worldwide, living in 90 countries and making up 6.2% of the global population. They speak the majority of the world’s 7,000 languages.
The UN defines Indigenous Peoples as communities with historical continuity in a region prior to colonization and a strong link to their lands. Land holds profound spiritual, cultural, and economic significance for all Indigenous Peoples, serving as the foundation of their identities and ways of life.
While Indigenous Peoples have distinct languages, cultures, beliefs and knowledge systems, they are grouped under the umbrella term “Indigenous Peoples” based on shared characteristics, including their relationship to land and territory, land-use practices, political distinctiveness from the dominant society, self-identification as Indigenous and pre-colonial existence.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) establishes a set of rights fundamental to Indigenous Peoples, with the right to self-determination and to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) are two central principles.
The right to self-determination is the right for Indigenous Peoples to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. It is a cornerstone right encompassing land rights, participatory rights, cultural rights, food and water security rights.
The right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) stems from the right to self-determination and protects various aspects of Indigenous Peoples’ lives, including autonomy, land rights, their health, social development and cultural, spiritual or religious heritage.
In the context of renewable energy projects, FPIC is required before approving and initiating any project that may affect the lands, territories, and resources customarily owned, occupied, or otherwise used byIndigenous Peoples.
What is FPIC?
- Free is the right to enter into conversations and negotiations without coercion or manipulation.
- Prior is the right to be involved well before any decision is made about length, resources or people.
- Informed means the right to have full information that is easily accessible and readily available, allowing for affected communities to ask questions and raise concerns.
- Consent is the right to say yes, or no, or to say yes with conditions. Consent requires the timely sharing of proper information and adequate consultation.
FPIC is not a mechanism to legitimize commercial activities. Businesses engaging with Indigenous communities must understand that the goal of an FPIC process is not to secure a “yes” from the community, but to respect the rights and decisions of people (potentially) affected byinvestments and infrastructure projects.
FPIC is an ongoing process, not a one-time approval. Consent can be granted for distinct stages of a project and may be withdrawn if project conditions change.
Consultation is not consent. While an FPIC engagement may encompass a series of consultations to inform Indigenous communities about potential impacts of the project on their lives, conducting these meetings does not constitute consent. Following regular consultation meetings, Indigenous communities must have the opportunity to deliberate privately without company representatives, before making a decision. As such, consultations are not a substitute but a prerequisite for the Indigenous community to provide or withhold its consent.
For more information on Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Peoples’Rights and access the FPIC Guide, visit the SIRGE Coalition’s website.
Responsible Engagement Lessons from Extractives
Many of the human rights risks and impacts present in the extractives industry also appear in the renewable energy value chain, as systemic vulnerabilities persist.
Some examples of human rights impacts in renewable energy that involve Indigenous Peoples’ rights include:
- Mining of rare earth minerals on lands owned and used by Indigenous communities,
- Refining and processing of minerals that pollute the air, water and lands of Indigenous Peoples, and
- Manufacturing of components with labor abuse risks, including state-imposed forced labor of minority groups and Indigenous peoples, such as Uyghur forced labor in the solar supply chain.
The experiences of the extractives industry offers various lessons for players in the green energy:
- Legal compliance is not enough. Governments do not always recognize or enforce laws that protect Indigenous land rights. This means that companies cannot assume they are respecting these rights simply by complying with domestic regulations. To avoid blind spots, companies must conduct their own due diligence, identifying and assessing the risks and impacts of their investments on Indigenous communities.
- Case in point: Rio Tinto project that permanently destroyed the 46,000-year old Jukaan Gorge rock shelters, sacred to and traditionally owned by the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura People in Western Australia. While the expansion that led to the destruction had legal approval, it nevertheless resulted in a public outrage, a parliamentary inquiry and the removal of the top three executives. In this case, Rio Tinto failed to ensure FPIC, as the Indigenous landowners were never presented with alternative options to protect the site—only one that led to its destruction.
- Project planning must include Indigenous perspectives. Companies conceptualize projects in phases – feasibility, advanced exploration, piloting and more – but these project planning terms do not take into account the everyday lives of affected Indigenous communities. When planning infrastructure projects, companies must assess the potential outcomes of each phase from the outset, looking at the specific impacts on Indigenous communities from the perspective of community members. To be able to do so, transparent, proactive and regular dialog is necessary.
- For example: An onshore wind farm or mining project might require the use of land that cuts through Indigenous farmland, disrupting the movement of animals or impeding access to traditional territories vital for livelihoods, survival and well-being of the community.
- Indirect human rights impacts matter. Even if a company does not directly cause harm to Indigenous communities, an indirect linkage to adverse human rights impacts does not absolve a company of responsibility. Players in the different tiers of the renewable energy value chain must uphold the rights of affected communities and to mitigate the adverse impacts in their supply chains.
- For example: A company may not be the one mining the land, but if it uses batteries containing minerals extracted from Indigenous territories, it has the responsibility to identify adverse impacts, engage with affected rightsholders (i.e., the Indigenous community), remediate past harms, and implement measures to prevent future harms – including by ensuring a proper FPIC process.
Responsible Engagement with Indigenous Communities: Promising Practices in Renewable Energy
While violations of Indigenous rights continue in Canada, the country is also home to some of the most promising renewable energy projects that have demonstrated responsible engagement with Indigenous communities. In fact, as of 2022, nearly 20% of Canada’s electricity-generating infrastructure involved partnerships or benefits for Indigenous Peoples – most of them in renewable energy.
In these partnership agreements, First Nations established consultation protocols that outline how governments and energy companies should be engaging with First Nation communities. These protocols ensure that energy projects are designed to avoid certain spaces that are sacred or of other significance to Indigenous communities, their timelines respect the traditional culture, allocate a certain portion of employment for the local community and ensure benefits such as lower energy costs for the community.
Notable energy projects in partnership with or led by Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia include:
- The First Nations LNG Alliance (Canada)
- A community-owned wind energy development in M’Chigeeng First Nation (Canada)
- Hot Springs Cove renewable energy project fully owned by the Hesquiaht First Nation in partnership with renewable energy companies (Canada)
- Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program and the Indigenous Natural Resource Partnerships (INRP) (Canada)
- Aboriginal Clean Energy Partnership, a First Nations-led clean energy, green hydrogen and green ammonia export project (Australia)
Green energy transition cannot come at the expense of human rights, particularly those of Indigenous people – the guardians of our planet. Our ambition to lead environmentally sustainable lives cannot jeopardize social sustainability. The renewable energy sector has a responsibility to ensure that, as it grows, it does not harm the communities whose lands and resources it depends on. Fortunately, the renewable energy sector has a unique opportunity to learn from the extractive industry.
The tools and guidance to do better are manifold and publicly available. It is now up to the producers and users of renewable energy to put them into practice for the benefit of all.
This article is based on the insights provided by Kendyl Salcito (NomoGaia), Galina Angarova (SIRGE Coalition) and Cecilia Barral Diego (CORE) during the webinar titled “Let’s get to the CORE of Human Rights in the Energy Transition: How your business is connected to Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and what you should do about it” on 5 March 2025.
Serra for the CORE team
