Jeopardy in Geopolitics

In this climate milieu, geopolitical conflicts and national security priorities increasingly override environmental conservation and indigenous land rights, transforming green transitions into strategic resource competition. Obviously, climate challenges are getting more intense with the growing geopolitical complexities and it's imperative that the IPs and LCs need a definite and acclaimed forum to voice for equitable "Access and Benefit Sharing". Great powers prioritize deforestation and changes in LUP and LC for critical mineral extraction and defence autonomy over local ecological accountability. Such intrusions have socioecological impacts that impair the life and livelihood of indigenous people and local communities. Few such jeopardies are highlighted below.

Strategic Constraints and the Green Economy

Critical Minerals: Lithium, cobalt, and nickel are treated as vital defence assets rather than environmental goods. Extraction of these minerals would not only change the land use plan and land cover; it would also challenge the livelihood security of the local communities and the indigenous people.

State Priorities: With the changing geopolitical equations in the Asian and African ecoregion, national security imperatives now bypass standard environmental reviews and corporate accountability. Militarized zones and extending defence areas are encroaching into biological corridors and restricting the movements of upland dwellers, range landers and as well transhumance.

Resource Nationalism: Geopolitical rivalry drives rapid, unchecked industrial extraction in fragile ecosystems, deteriorating ecosystem services of agro-ecological zones, rangelands, pastural lands and wetlands. This is augmenting forced migration and destabilization of indigenous communities and weakening of agrarian economies of local communities.

Impacts on Indigenous Communities

Land Dispossession: Indigenous territories face militarization and forced displacement for renewable projects and mining.

Erosion of Rights: Global powers treat indigenous consent as a dispensable risk factor rather than a legal foundation.

Ecological Resilience: Traditional stewardship practices that successfully protect biodiversity are marginalized by top-down state policies.

Environmental Consequences

Habitat Degradation: Accelerated mining and military activities degrade natural buffers and increase pollution.

Governance Failures: Strategic competition diverts funds and focus away from cooperative global climate solutions.

Conflicts and trade-offs between Indigenous peoples and environmental conservation stem from historical displacement, clashing land-use rules, and exclusion from modern decision-making. While Indigenous groups safeguard vast portions of global biodiversity, state-led conservation models often restrict their traditional livelihoods.

Core Conflicts & Trade-Offs

Core Conflicts

Fortress Conservation: State parks often forcibly evict native groups from homelands under the assumption that human presence harms nature.

Resource Restrictions: Laws penalize traditional hunting, fishing, and foraging, treating ancient practices as rule violations.

Epistemological Clashes: Bureaucracies favor rigid Western science over traditional, adaptive ecological knowledge systems.

Key Trade-Offs

Livelihood vs. Preservation: Restricting land access protects wild species short-term but starves subsistence economies long-term.

Green Economy Pressures: Global shifts toward clean energy create new mining demands on native lands, pitting climate goals against local community survival.

Control vs. Collaboration: Top-down management blocks local autonomy, whereas inclusive frameworks yield better ecological results.

ICARSIS