Reclaiming Ground: Indigenous Self- Determination As The Cornerstone Of Environmental Justice
B. Aslin Steffi, LLM [International Law and Organisation], University of Madras
ABSTRACT
Environmental justice scholarship has traditionally centred distributive and procedural fairness in the allocation of environmental burdens and benefits. This paradigm, however, has often failed to reckon with the foundational role of colonial dispossession in producing the very environmental harms it purports to remedy. This paper argues that Indigenous self-determination understood as the substantive authority of Indigenous peoples to govern their lands, waters, and knowledge systems is not merely one input into environmental justice but its structural precondition. Drawing on comparative jurisprudence from Canada, India, Brazil, and international climate governance, the paper traces how courts, multilateral institutions, and Indigenous movements have reconfigured the relationship between sovereignty, territory, and ecological stewardship between 2024 and 2026. It examines recent landmark developments, including the British Columbia Court of Appeal's ruling in Nuchatlaht v. British Columbia recognising Aboriginal title over a substantial portion of Nootka Island, the Supreme Court of British Columbia's decision in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada recognising Aboriginal title over lands held in fee simple for the first time in Canadian history, the Gitxaała ruling on the binding legal force of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, the Supreme Court of India's engagement with the tension between the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 in Sugra Adiwasi v. Pathranand, and the contested outcomes for Indigenous peoples at COP30 in Belém. The paper further engages with the emerging framework of Indigenous Environmental Data Justice, which reframes data and knowledge governance as an extension of self-determination rather than a purely technical or scientific concern. Situating these developments within the normative architecture of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and International Labour Organisation Convention No. 169, the paper contends that free, prior and informed consent, secure land tenure, and jurisdictional autonomy together operate as the minimum conditions for meaningful environmental justice. It concludes by identifying persistent fault lines including political and industry backlash against Aboriginal title litigation, the unresolved tension between conservation law and tribal welfare, and the continued marginalisation of Indigenous voice within climate finance architecture and proposes a rights-based, self-determination-centred reorientation of environmental justice discourse, adjudication, and policy design.
Keywords: Indigenous self-determination; environmental justice, Aboriginal title, free, prior and informed consent, UNDRIP, Forest Rights Act, climate governance, Indigenous data sovereignty.
