Indigenous approach to entrepreneurship

CLAUDIA LARICCHIA

My name is Claudia and I am the first non-indigenous leader of the World Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Justice, which represents around 400 million people in 90 countries of which 20 million live among the 97 indigenous communities of Assam alone .

The Forum is founded by The Forest Man of India, Jadav Molai Payeng, the man who in 30 years planted an entire forest in Assam, North East India.

Where The Forest Man planted a forest, we are now planting with him a new human consciousness, from which comes a new approach to entrepreneurship. This is the mission of Smily Academy, the Forum program that co-creates innovative youth businesses starting from teaching the indigenous factor .

Jadav Payeng — The Forest Man of India, Jadav Molai Payeng

Why is the indigenous approach to entrepreneurship crucial today?

Indigenous people hold and protect 85% of the world’s biodiversity. Therefore talking about ESG or SDG without such guardians of Creation becomes at least partial . 6 years after the possible collapse and taking note of the already irreversible effects of the climate emergency, we need to radically accelerate climate action. We have nothing else to lose now.

The role of entrepreneurship is transforming in the perfect storm of the current hyper-connected crises, resulting from the implosion of a system born from an extractive mentality and linear thinking.

Doing business today also means calculating your impacts and staying below thresholds that are completely unlikely compared to the investments made so far, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60% within 11 years and by 84% by 2050 . Above there will be no undertaking, because there will be no life. An indigenous approach is to adopt a regenerative mindset and systems thinking. In this context, water is the perfect example of this passage .

The case of water

Water is one of the most iconic elements of the ecological transition and the transition from the extractive to the regenerative mindset for at least 3 reasons:

1) The life cycle of water and humanity : today air pollution is generating an unprecedented distortion of the life cycle of water, as most of the extra heat generated is absorbed by seas and oceans, also contributing to greater acidification. Drought and desertification already affect 3 billion people in agricultural areas.

2) Water is nourishment : on the one hand, agri-food systems use over 70% of water and it is they that we need to look at for regenerative management. On the other hand, the water footprint of food is essential to fully understand its environmental impact.

3) Humanity is water on a planet that sheds water from all sides : the human being is made up of water and needs it. Yet, we pollute it and make it scarce and inaccessible.

It is a relationship born of the extractive mentality, of those who believe they have unlimited access to resources and have no sense of the future.

Jadav Payeng 1 — The Forest Man of India, Jadav Molai Payeng

The indigenous way

On March 22nd World Water Day, I will be with The Forest Man of India in Molai Forest celebrating life with a delegation of 30 young people who are developing eco-entrepreneurial projects. We experience training in the indigenous factor of the new generations, in places where Al Gore’s network is planting 5 million trees and in those where Forest Man has planted as many as the equivalent of 13 football fields.

We sow the indigenous factor to entrepreneurship through 3 phases: soul, reconnection with oneself; society, reconnection with others, soil, reconnection with the Planet. The indigenous approach to entrepreneurship starts from here, convinced that the future is now either regenerative, or not at all, and that this future starts from an ancestral past, contaminated by technological progress in the service of biodiversity. And you? Do you have the indigenous factor?

*Claudia Laricchia is the Head of Global Strategic Cooperation at the Indigenous People’s Climate Justice Forum; CEO Smily Academy; Advisor G7, Official engagement group on gender equality Women7; EIIS professor.

** this article has been published on Fortune Italia https://www.fortuneita.com/2024/03/15/approccio-indigeno-allimprenditorialita/“

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