Chapter 4, ‘Emerging Status as Law? Participation of Indigenous Peoples in International Governance, 2007–2022’, continues the narrative from the point of the adoption of the UNDRIP in September 2007. In this period, the general trend of the proliferation of participatory policies and mechanisms identified in Chapter 3 only intensified. Organizations that had not previously attempted to include Indigenous peoples in a systematic way now adopted mechanisms and policies to do so, while those that had previously instituted such mechanisms or policies sought to enhance them. This chapter maps the contours of this continuing trend, showing how the participation zeitgeist spread through numerous UN organs and international organizations. It assesses the question of states’ and international organizations’ motivations for enabling Indigenous peoples to be heard in such fora. It shows how states and international organizations now increasingly justified participation policies with reference to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It demonstrates how in nearly all cases barriers to full and effective participation remain.

In Chapter 3, ‘The Proliferation of Indigenous Peoples’ Participation, 1982–2007’, I trace how a pattern of state practice unfurled over a span of 25 years, beginning with the establishment of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) and spreading to numerous other UN organs, international organizations, and other international governance mechanisms. It at first takes a chronological approach, tracing relevant practice from 1988 to 1994 in processes such as the negotiations towards the International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, UN conferences, and several UN expert workshops. It then considers how momentum grew towards the establishment of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The chapter next turns to consider several parallel trends. It turns to mechanisms for Indigenous peoples’ participation in environment and development negotiations, before tracing Indigenous peoples’ participation in decision-making in international development institutions. The chapter ends by examining three regional stories: the Arctic, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the European Union.

Given that a healthy marine environment provides a foundation for all life, marine environmental protection is an issue of considerable importance in the law of the sea. In principle, the law regulates marine pollution according to its sources, such as land-based pollution, vessel-source pollution, dumping, pollution from seabed activities under national jurisdiction, pollution from activities in the Area and pollution through the atmosphere. Accordingly, this chapter will seek to examine the rules of international law regulating marine pollution arising from these sources. Particular focus will be on the following issues: (1) the key features that characterise marine environmental protection, (2) the significance of the LOSC in marine environmental protection, (3) rules regulating land-based marine pollution, (4) the mechanisms for regulating vessel-source marine pollution, (5) compliance with relevant rules governing marine environmental protection, and (6) the problem with the fragmentation of norms concerning marine environmental protection.

This chapter examines the relationship between climate stress, Indigenous sustainability, and sovereignty in the trans-Pacific context. Using the work of Keri Hulme (Maori), Craig Santos Perez (Chamorro Guam), Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner (Marshall Islands), Nequo Soqluman (Bunun Taiwan), Rimuy Aki (Atayal Taiwan) as counter-narratives, I challenge readers to reconsider the centrality of the Indigenous subject by retrieving overlooked trans-Pacific Indigenous experiences. Instead of ‘small islands in the remote sea’, as Epili Hau’ofa puts it, the Pacific/Oceania should be re-visioned as ‘a sea of islands’, giving rise to unique Indigenous ways of life expressed through outstanding cultural landscapes and seascapes in the intangible heritage of traditions, knowledge, and stories. The Pacific Islanders are united in their concerns of rising ocean levels, the connection between militarisation and colonialisation of the seas, and the ecological impacts of climate change on the ocean. I argue that narratives and poetry from Pacific Indigenous communities forge a constellation of resistant practices in the era of global climate crisis. Indigenous texts from the trans-Pacific propel us to reconsider human transformation of planetary networks in which Indigenous agency plays an important role. They formulate Anthropocene problems and reconceptualise connectivity between humans and other species, lands and waters, as possible solutions.

This chapter illustrates how a potential for goods substitution may foment a strategy of playing the big powers against one another. Client states are using the threat of exit to gain leverage, and to renegotiate deals. There are signs of decline of US hegemony in the North Atlantic, and an increased potential for goods substitution by Russia and China. However, goods substitution has not been initiated by Russia and China offering what the USA or the West have ceased to offer. Rather, alternative goods provision has been sought out from below, by polities with complex post-colonial and hegemonic relationships with a variety of states. These polities are experimenting with new ways of playing the USA, Russia and China against each other. Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes exploit their strategic positions to push great powers to compete in offering a variety of public and private goods. Client states may be using the threat of substitution as strategic leverage, which drive the hegemon to renegotiate. Client leverage will be at the highest when the client can easily switch goods provider, but where the hegemon cannot easily find an alternative client.