Carbon credits, extractive industries and fossil fuels are reinforcing land dispossession, ecological destruction and climate injustice
Antalya, Türkiye | 12 November 2026
Shine Collab is calling on governments and climate negotiators to confront what it describes as a “triple disaster” facing Indigenous Peoples and grassroots communities: carbon credit schemes, extractive industries and continued fossil fuel exploitation. The organisation warns that, although these forces are often presented separately—and carbon markets are promoted as a climate solution—they can reinforce one another at the expense of communities’ rights, territories and livelihoods.
The three pressures are interconnected. Fossil fuel extraction and combustion remain major drivers of climate change, whose impacts are felt acutely by communities that have contributed least to the crisis. Extractive activities, including mining for minerals associated with the energy transition, can intensify competition for land and water, damage ecosystems and undermine customary livelihoods. Carbon credit projects can add another layer of pressure by turning forests, grasslands and other living ecosystems into commercial carbon assets.
“Communities are being squeezed from three directions: their territories are targeted for resources, their livelihoods are undermined by environmental destruction and climate impacts, and their relationship with nature is being recast as a carbon commodity,” Shine Collab said. “A climate response that reproduces dispossession cannot deliver climate justice.”
Concerns raised by Indigenous representatives include restrictions on pastoral mobility, long-term land-use agreements, limited transparency over buyers and revenues, exclusion of women from decision-making and inadequate recognition of customary governance. Such arrangements can undermine access to food, water and culturally significant places. Where communities do not have accessible information or meaningful power to refuse, claims of consent and benefit-sharing are particularly troubling.
Shine Collab stresses that the issue is not simply whether carbon markets can be made more technically reliable. It is whether offsetting allows high-emitting actors to delay direct emissions reductions while shifting social and environmental costs onto communities. Carbon credits must never substitute for cutting pollution at source, respecting land rights or meeting public climate-finance obligations.
The organisation is urging governments and negotiators to protect Indigenous land tenure and self-determination; guarantee free, prior and informed consent; prevent fossil fuel expansion and destructive extraction; and direct predictable, public, grant-based climate finance to locally led priorities. Indigenous women, pastoralists and grassroots organisations must have decision-making power—not merely be consulted after decisions have been made.
“Indigenous Peoples are not obstacles to climate action. Their knowledge, stewardship and leadership are essential to protecting ecosystems and building resilience,” Shine Collab said. “The transition must be measured not only in tonnes of carbon, but in rights upheld, livelihoods protected and communities empowered.”
Shine Collab calls for climate action rooted in human rights, ecological integrity and community self-determination. There can be no just transition while the same communities continue to pay the price for pollution, extraction and carbon profiteering.