Indigenous People's Global Summit - Thursday - Private Sector

Patricia Cochran, the coordinator of the whole summit went over the schedule. There will be an extra hour for people to work on the Declaration. Dinner tonight, then program at 7:30 with performances from all over the world, a night to have some fun. It's five pm already, so I don't think the program will start at 7:30.

Mead Treadwell - Talking about work his company has done with Native Corporations in Alaska and the importance of indigenous people in a variety of areas. I just have to commend the indigenous community for taking leadership in this area. You have high moral ground.

Mary Jean (MJ) Longley ? - Went from science to education because of the high dropout rate around the country. Bringing youth into science fields. Climate change is not in our education system or how it is impacting indigenous people.

Ian Dutton, CEO of the Alaska Sealife Center, before that with Nature Conservancy. The challenge we all face: climate change. I've worked with mining companies, banks, in Australia, Mongolia. Surprising how similar their conversations are to the ones here.
Changes are synergistic. Now 1 million camels walking around Australian desert. Effecting the ecology of Australia.
Asian Tsunami - we've already diminished the resiliance of the land to recover

Reality 2: Geographic Impacts

Emerging Business Foci - what can we do
Risks Opportunities


Barnaby Briggs, from Shell - humbled to be here, but there's no time. We believe in the importance of indigenous people. Energy demand will double by 2050, but the problems of climate change are now. (I didn't get the first part about indigenous people on video, but I got the rest. I'll try to get this up, but the video is building up on the computer.)

Pat Spears, Council on Utility Policy, Tribes in the Northern Plains, Serve of President of Intertribal Council
Development of wind energy, a huge resource. Pat's been talking a while about wind energy, the Missouri River being dammed and the loss of rain and snow over the years. I'm running out of energy myself here, so I'm not doing a good job of tracking him.

Q: How are we sure that wind power won't affect climate?
Q: Interdisciplinary knowledge and indigenous people.

Answer: Spears: If I understand right, you think wind power might affect climate somehow. I haven't seen evidence of that yet. There is a lot of wind projects in US. We think climate is affecting the wind. We get more winds from the south now. It used to be north winds. Winds becoming stronger, more violent, frequent. But no rain. Wind turbines shut down at 55 miles per hour. We don't do anything without prayer. It's been good, we got permission.


Answer 2: Dutton - I (Steve) just can't concentrate enough to figure what Dutton is saying or even what the question was.
Treadwell: Have seen several examples of Alaska Native traditional knowledge adding to what scientists know.

I thought this panel would be more about how to work with business on this issue. It was more about telling the panelists' experiences.

Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change (click link for all the posts on the summit)