Shine Collab: Carbon Credits, Mining, and Fossil Fuels Are a Triple Threat to Indigenous Communities

Shine Collab, a coalition focused on Indigenous and grassroots community rights, is calling on governments and climate negotiators to address what it calls a triple disaster: carbon credit projects, extractive industries, and continued fossil fuel exploitation. The group argues these pressures often reinforce each other, turning forests and grasslands into commercial carbon assets while weakening community control over land, water, and livelihoods. The article highlights specific concerns from Indigenous representatives, including restricted pastoral mobility, opaque carbon credit buyers and revenues, exclusion of women from decisions, and weak recognition of customary governance. Shine Collab says the issue is not only whether carbon markets can measure emissions accurately, but whether offsetting lets high emitters delay direct cuts while shifting social and environmental costs onto communities. The group is urging negotiators to protect Indigenous land tenure, guarantee free, prior and informed consent, stop fossil fuel expansion, and direct grant-based climate finance to locally led priorities. The piece is relevant for anyone tracking carbon market design, climate justice, and the real-world conditions that decide whether climate finance helps or harms communities.