Sara Olsvig is a veteran advocate for Indigenous rights at international meetings, maneuvering with some success even at institutions not known to be particularly adaptive. “Through the many decades of advocacy and Indigenous diplomacy that we’ve been doing, we have seen how much we can impact decision-making in the U.N.,” she says. Olsvig chairs the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), which represents some 180,000 Inuit people across Alaska (in the United States), Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (the Inuit name for Greenland) and Chukotka (in Russia). She grew up in Inuit communities in Greenland, the world’s largest island and an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and has served in both the Greenlandic and Danish parliaments. The ICC has been at work since 1977, yet some of its most essential international efforts are underway today. The Inuit are a coastal people who largely live off the sea, and much of the ICC’s work focuses on marine governance. Climate change has reduced the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, opening up new shipping lanes and increasing interest in various forms of resource exploitation, including for oil, gas and minerals. As these pivotal changes take place, the ICC is engaged in negotiations over the development of major marine-related international agreements under U.N. bodies. These include shipping decarbonization talks and other rule-making processes at the International Maritime Organization (IMO); the drafting of a global plastics treaty; and the implementation of the agreement on marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ), which is also…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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