Introducing Paul Belisario – IPMSD/The Philippines
Meet Paul Belisario, Assistant Global Coordinator for the International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), a KAIROS solidarity partner. His work focuses on campaigns, mobilization and outreach on the themes of liberation movements and right to self-determination, land rights, climate justice, and food systems.
Paul will be representing IPMSDL in a Global Indigenous Peoples delegation to COP27, but he has also agreed to join the KAIROS delegation to lend his experience and expertise working on Indigenous rights and climate change issues in the Philippines.
About the impacts of climate change in the Philippines, Paul states:
“Climate change, climate imperialism impacts on Indigenous communities and rural communities every day. It impacts on the kinds of disaster they experience – the landslides, the degradation of their ancestral lands, even the way and how they produce their food and how they exercise their culture, and how they live and exercise their spirituality.”
His message to the Canadian government is for greater solidarity and recognition of the role of Indigenous Peoples in addressing climate change, and, of course, stronger policies to defend Indigenous rights:
“Our message to the Canadian federal government and the Canadian people is for them to extend their solidarity and unity with Indigenous peoples and rural communities and for them to recognize their role in protecting our environment, in protecting our planet and for them to realize and to stand and defend their roles in combatting climate change. By recognizing their [Indigenous peoples] rights, by recognizing their ancestral lands we are making our move to protect [the environment], and to stop climate change.”
Watch Paul’s introductory video.
Additional links and materials from IPMSDL
Follow and support Fight for our Future, a global IPMSDL campaign which brings Indigenous communities and organizations together worldwide under the common struggle for land and self- determination and the struggle for a sustainable, healthy, free and just world. The campaign is organized under the themes of land, health, rights and climate change (fight for the planet) and calls for radical change. The current system is killing us, the campaign notes.
Be-Cause Health Conference 2021: Climate Justice and Health Equity
“They’re land and climate defenders, not criminals!”
Climate justice is not possible without the Indigenous Peoples Heroes
Peace-building Disrupted by COVID-19 and Climate Change in the Global South
Waves of Resistance in a Climate of Crisis: The Political Economy of Climate Change
SHIELD FOR THE FUTURE: Agenda of the Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines on Climate Change
Reject false solutions to climate crisis assert indigenous peoples right to self determination
