Deusdedit Ruhangariyo
ICT
Around the world: Sri Lankan Island fights back against destructive mineral extraction plans; Kenyan high court restores farmers’ rights to save Indigenous seeds; Ontario advocates demand Indigenous inclusion in procurement; and Amazon guardians fight despite danger, poverty and abandonment in Colombia.
SRI LANKA: An island fights back against mineral extraction
On the windswept beaches of Mannar Island in northwestern Sri Lanka, a song has become a rallying cry. In “Karunilam” (“black sand”), young artist Eric Fernando sings: “Cries in silence, her veins robbed by greedy hands …” It is a haunting lament — and a warning. The song captures the anguish, fear and defiance of communities that believe that ilmenite mining could scar their homeland forever. As Mongabay reported on Nov. 28, the people of Mannar feel their island is speaking, and they must speak back.
Mannar’s conflict is rooted in a mineral coveted globally: ilmenite, used to produce titanium dioxide for paints, plastics, cosmetics and even aircraft. Though Sri Lanka’s famous Pulmoddai sands have long been known for ilmenite, Mannar’s deposits were noted as far back as colonial surveys. Interest surged in the mid-2010s when Australia-based Titanium Sands Limited drilled hundreds of holes across the island and alarmed residents.
University of Jaffna geographer Nagamuthu Piratheeparajah warns that Mannar’s low-lying terrain cannot sustain deep mining. Excavations up to 12 meters could destabilize sediments, disrupt groundwater, and irreversibly alter drainage patterns. Removing sand from beaches, dunes and coastal soils threatens to accelerate erosion and intensify storm surges, he explains, hazards that could turn a fragile ecosystem into a disaster zone.
The repercussions would not only be ecological. Mannar’s 70,000 residents, including more than 22,000 fishers, depend on healthy waters, fertile paddies, and coconut groves. As Chintaka Rajapaksa of MONLAR notes, “If these lands are destroyed by sand mining, there will be huge issues.” Jobs promised by mining firms, he argues, cannot compensate for collapsing agricultural and fishing systems.
Recent protests reflect this rising fear. The movement has spilled from Mannar to the capital, Colombo, where citizens demand that local rights outweigh foreign profit. Fernando is adamant: “We do not want to fight with the government. We just want to protect what is ours before it is gone.”
Titanium Sands insists mining has not begun, emphasizing environmental studies and landowner consent for exploration. The Geological Survey and Mines Bureau confirms the company holds only exploration licenses, and any actual mining would require a rigorous Environmental Impact Assessment.
But environmental groups like Climate Action Now fear that project-by-project studies ignore a deeper truth: Mannar is an interconnected ecosystem of seagrass beds, migratory bird routes, cultural heritage sites, and delicate coastal habitats. They call for a whole-island environmental impact statement.
Globally, Mannar’s fears are justified. From Tamil Nadu to Madagascar, sand mining has ravaged coasts, wiped out fisheries, and triggered groundwater collapse. Once sand is removed, “Natural regeneration can take decades or longer,” Piratheeparajah says.
Mannar stands at a crossroads. One path promises short-term profit; the other demands long-term stewardship. As one activist put it: “If we lose the sand, we lose Mannar itself.”
KENYA: Court decision supports Indigenous seed preservation
In a historic victory for farmers, Kenya’s High Court has overturned legal provisions that criminalized the use of Indigenous and unregistered seeds. Justice Rhoda Rutto ruled that the contested clauses violated fundamental constitutional rights — including culture, livelihood and economic freedom — by imposing harsh penalties on smallholder farmers simply for planting the seeds their communities have relied on for generations. As Kiambu TV reported on Nov. 29, the ruling is widely seen as a restoration of dignity and autonomy to rural households across the country.
The case, filed by 15 smallholder farmers with the backing of civil society organizations, challenged regulations that allowed inspectors to raid community seed banks, restrict seed reuse, and effectively hand control of Kenya’s food systems to commercial breeders. Farmers argued that the laws criminalized Indigenous agricultural knowledge and elevated corporate interests over community needs.
Samuel Kioko Wathome, a petitioner from Machakos, celebrated the ruling, noting that many farmers cannot afford certified seeds. “We have always saved our own seeds. … This ruling removes the fear that we were doing something wrong,” he said. Another petitioner, Veronicah Kalondu, emphasized that Indigenous seeds are lifelines in a changing climate: “These seeds withstand droughts, floods and poor soils. Protecting them means protecting our future.”
Environmental and food sovereignty advocates, including Greenpeace Africa, hailed the decision as a major step toward safeguarding biodiversity. They argue that farmer-managed seed systems, which have long sustained Kenyan communities, are essential for climate resilience, seed diversity, and community self-determination.
Experts note that the judgement strengthens the legal foundation for farmer-managed seed systems by affirming farmers’ rights to save, exchange and breed seeds. It also dismantles legal barriers that hindered community seed banks and restricted farmer-to-farmer seed sharing.
Petitioners are now urging Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to revise national seed policies and formally integrate farmer-managed seed systems into the country’s food security strategies. Civil society groups have pledged to support farmers to ensure the ruling is implemented and to push for policy reforms that reflect the nation’s diverse seed heritage.
Beyond national borders, the landmark decision is expected to influence seed policy discussions across East Africa. It challenges the growing trend of laws shaped by industrial agriculture lobbies, which often marginalize Indigenous knowledge and prioritize commercial seed certification systems.
The ruling also underscores the importance of seeds as cultural heritage. For many Kenyan communities, seeds are not merely agricultural inputs but links to ancestors, symbols of resilience, and carriers of memory. By affirming farmers’ rights to use Indigenous varieties, the court has upheld a vital pillar of cultural survival.
CANADA: Advocates demand Indigenous inclusion in procurement
In Canada’s most populous province, Indigenous business advocates are sounding the alarm: Ontario’s proposed Buy Ontario Act does not go far enough in recognizing Indigenous enterprises as vital contributors to the provincial and national economy. As CBC News reported on Nov. 28, the legislation, designed to prioritize Ontario-made goods and services in public-sector procurement, misses a critical opportunity to embed Indigenous prosperity directly into economic policy.
Tabatha Bull, CEO of the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business and a member of Nipissing First Nation, argues that Indigenous inclusion must be explicit, not optional. “Recognition embedded in the act … is important because then we’re there at the table when the policy is being developed instead of fighting to be included,” she said. Bull notes that Indigenous businesses have already proven their impact in supply chains across Canada, creating jobs and enabling communities to build generational wealth that was denied for decades.
Ontario is home to more than 406,000 Indigenous people, the largest Indigenous population in Canada and more than 3,500 Indigenous-owned businesses. Yet advocates fear the act’s current language, which prioritizes Ontario and Canadian suppliers broadly, fails to guarantee that Indigenous businesses receive meaningful access to provincial procurement opportunities.
Bull insists that the government has the power to set clear targets, much like the federal government’s commitment to directing at least 5 percent of its procurement to Indigenous businesses. “We need those champions in the government. … Maybe they set that at 5 percent,” she said. Without such commitments, she warns, Ontario risks perpetuating long-standing economic inequities.
This call for inclusion comes as Ontario and Manitoba negotiate agreements with the federal government to streamline project approvals. Bull argues that Indigenous communities must be part of these major projects to ensure benefits are shared across Canada, as promised by the prime minister.
Ontario’s Ministry of Indigenous Affairs points to its Indigenous Procurement Program, which has facilitated more than 420 procurements valued at over $263 million over the last decade. It has also partnered with the Chiefs of Ontario to develop the province’s first Indigenous-led and -certified First Nations Business Directory, a tool meant to register and showcase First Nations businesses for procurement opportunities. Yet advocates say these efforts need to be fully integrated into legislation, not remain optional add-ons.
Entrepreneur Chelsee Pettit, founder of aaniin and member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation, runs a 6,000-square-foot pop-up in Toronto’s Eaton Centre featuring Indigenous-owned brands. She says Indigenous businesses are “as Canadian as you can get,” yet she feels largely ignored by elected officials and said only one politician has ever visited her store. Pettit hires Ontario-based suppliers exclusively and has significantly scaled her operations, investing over $1 million last year alone.
Grand Council Chief Linda Debassige of the Anishinabek Nation summarized the stakes clearly: Excluding Indigenous businesses is a “missed opportunity” that leaves “billions of dollars on the table.”
Advocates say true reconciliation includes economic reconciliation — and that starts with showing up for Indigenous entrepreneurs in the policies that shape the province’s future
COLOMBIA: Amazon guardians fight despite danger, poverty
Every morning at 7 a.m. in the remote Colombian community of San Martín de Amacayacu, 74-year-old Olegario Sánchez Pinto begins his patrol. With only a traditional walking stick, he checks the river port, visits homes to ensure no one is ill, mediates conflicts through the guidance of the curaca (chief), and walks the ravines to monitor whether anyone is cutting trees, fishing illegally, or hunting during breeding season. “If you kill an animal with [a large] belly, that to us is a crime,” he says. His work is unpaid — but vital, Mongabay reported on Nov. 28.
Sánchez is one of 364 members of the Indigenous guard within the Ticoya Indigenous Reserve, part of a larger network of an estimated 1,200 guardians protecting the Amazon Trapeze, Colombia’s tri-border region with Peru and Brazil. Their responsibility is enormous: safeguarding more than 171,000 hectares of rainforest from illegal logging, overfishing, drug trafficking, and the encroachment of armed groups.
Yet despite their importance, many are leaving. The reason is simple: poverty. “I don’t want to work for free,” a former guardian told Sánchez. With few economic opportunities on the Colombian side, many cross into Peru seeking paid work, where, according to a 2024 Crisis Group report, coca cultivation has surged, fueling the region’s illicit economy.
In March 2025, more than 120 guardians gathered in Villa Andrea for a multicommunity training session. Heavy rains interrupted their exercises, but conversations revealed an urgent truth: Without equipment, transportation, or government support, the Indigenous guard struggles to fulfill its mission. Communities lack basic tools, flashlights, boots, radios, canoes and fuel. Some cannot investigate environmental crimes because they simply cannot afford to travel.
Their challenges mirror deeper threats. The Amazon is nearing an ecological “tipping point,” scientists warn, a moment when vast portions of rainforest could collapse into savanna. Indigenous territories hold 58 percent of Colombia’s Amazon forests, and research shows Indigenous peoples maintain 98 percent of forest cover within their lands. Their guardianship is not symbolic; it is the frontline of global climate defense.
Organizations like the Roads to Identity Foundation have worked with communities to restore degraded forests, planting more than one million seedlings in recent years and reforesting over 500 hectares. Yet even as communities restore the forest, illegal activities threaten to undo their progress.
Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office acknowledges that armed groups seek control of illegal mining routes, drug trafficking corridors, and timber resources. Some impoverished Indigenous youth, lacking alternatives, are drawn into these networks.
A 2024 presidential order recognized Indigenous guardians as environmental authorities, but it included no budget. Without funding, communities fear the recognition may become “just another piece of paper.”
Still, hope persists. Guardians like Sánchez continue their patrols. Leaders like Ahué Coello insist communities must strengthen internal structures while demanding state support. “We do not believe that Indigenous communities … should have to work for free,” says the Roads to Identity Foundation’s Martínez. “They need to be paid for taking care of this biome. The service they are providing is not just nothing.”
The Amazon’s future depends on whether the world listens.
My final thoughts
Across Sri Lanka, Kenya, Canada and Colombia, four very different stories converge into one truth: The world is entering an era when communities are fighting for the right to protect what sustains them — land, seeds, forests, identity and dignity. These stories unfold thousands of miles apart, yet they illuminate the same global fault lines: extraction without accountability, economic systems that ignore Indigenous knowledge, and governments that hesitate to empower the very people who keep ecosystems alive.
In Sri Lanka, Mannar Island’s resistance shows how easily profit-driven extraction can overwrite environmental reality. A fragile island, a grieving community, and a prophetic song remind us that when sand disappears, entire cultures and coastlines vanish with it. The battle is not only about minerals; it is about memory, belonging, and survival.
Kenya’s courtroom victory shows another pathway — the possibility of reclaiming agency through law. When the High Court overturned punitive seed laws, it restored something larger than agricultural rights: it reaffirmed the legitimacy of Indigenous knowledge systems in the fight against climate uncertainty. Seeds, like stories, carry ancestral wisdom. Their protection is an act of cultural sovereignty.
In Canada, the demand for Indigenous inclusion in the Buy Ontario Act exposes a quieter but equally dangerous form of exclusion — economic erasure. Without explicit recognition, Indigenous businesses risk being sidelined in a provincial economy they help power. Economic reconciliation cannot exist without economic visibility; procurement policy, a seemingly technical domain, becomes a battlefield for dignity and opportunity.
And in Colombia, the guardians of the Amazon fight a war on three fronts against: illegal extraction, the encroachment of armed groups, and the silence of a government that recognizes their authority but withholds the budget to sustain it. They protect a rainforest that stabilizes the planet, yet many cannot afford boots or fuel. Their unpaid labor props up the global climate system. Their sacrifice exposes the imbalance of a world that relies on Indigenous stewardship but rarely rewards it.
Together, these stories reveal a paradox: Those who care for the Earth most directly are often those fighting hardest simply to be recognized. They struggle not just against environmental harm, but against systems that undervalue their knowledge, their economies, and their rights.
But these stories also offer a roadmap. Resistance can be creative, like Fernando’s Karunilam. It can be legal, like Kenya’s farmers. It can be entrepreneurial, like Indigenous businesses in Ontario. It can be ancestral, like Colombia’s guardians whose traditions date back thousands of years.
The deeper lesson is this: the future of the planet will not be secured by technology, laws, or institutions alone. It will be secured by the people who live closest to the land — those who feel the first tremors of danger and raise the alarm long before the rest of the world notices.
If we listen to these communities, we may yet find the wisdom we need. If we ignore them, we risk losing not only ecosystems, but the moral compass required to navigate a turbulent century.