Efforts to combat climate change often exclude Indigenous people – and they may not have any recourse

Imagine living in the same forest as your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and all your ancestors as far back in time as stories can tell, and depending on the forest for food, shelter, recreation and education. Imagine, then, that the forest depends on you, too, because you and your people have protected it for generations. Then, along come government officials who tell you what you already know: The forest is precious, an environmental and ecological gem that should be preserved. And then they tell you that to protect it, you all have to leave. That’s the latest reason given in a series of efforts to evict the Ogiek people, an Indigenous group of hunter-gatherers in the Mau forest of East Africa. For more than a century, British colonial authorities and, later, Kenyan government officials, have all sought to evict the people who have lived there since time immemorial. And in 2017 the Ogieks won a landmark court case before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which recognized their legal right to the land. But in 2023, Kenya’s government began evicting them again, citing a new justification. The government wants to preserve the forest undisturbed, as a commercial resource in…

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