Indigenous peoples from different parts of the world participate in multi-scalar processes that shape changes in public policy concerning global commons, such as the atmosphere and oceans. They have managed to deepen the recognition of collective rights and generate new political and legal instruments. How do they work to achieve this? What is the impact of their action? What does it teach us about contemporary politics?

This presentation will introduce how indigenous peoples, by their environmental political activism, try to achieve the recognition of an ecocentric agency in political decision making (meaning a cognitive framework where the environment itself is seen as a domain of agents that respond to and thereby shape human decisions), and resist their collective eviction of particularly valuable places.  Progressively, they have achieved openness in a limited but influential multilateral process (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change - UNFCCC). The ideas of development and political procedures used the UNFCCC process still do not fit what is advocated by indigenous peoples’ organizations, but substantial changes can be observed.