Meet the changemakers: the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
The Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources is Canada’s first Indigenous directed environmental non-profit charitable organization. It supports Indigenous peoples in building capacity to form their own institutions and partner with government and other organizations to protect their lands and waters.
The changemaker series highlights the organizations, supported by BHP Foundation, that work on building solutions to complex social and environmental challenges. This time, we highlight the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER)’s impact and its Collaborative Leadership Initiative.
To find pathways for reconciliation and meaningful solutions to shared water challenges, the Collaborative Leadership Initiative (CLI):
- provides resources and expertise to support leaders in government, business, and industry, as well as NGOs and the scientific community, and
- establishes and facilitates organized multi-stakeholder ‘tables’ to enable discussions and solutions around collective interests.
Through partnerships with communities, funders and supporters, CIER’s CLI builds a collaborative network of people seeking to respectfully integrate ways of knowing —Indigenous and Western— towards reconciliation and under the common goal of solving environmental problems affecting Indigenous lands and waters.
Why CIER’s work is needed
Indigenous communities are the first to face the consequences of climate change due to their close relationship with the environment and its resources.
Sustainability challenges go beyond climate change mitigation when it comes to water. As of July 2024, 31 long-term drinking water advisories remained in 29 Indigenous communities in Canada, meaning that these communities do not have access to safe drinking water.
To address not only the land and water challenges but also to build environmental resilience, it is essential to build relationships based on reciprocity and work effectively with Indigenous communities.
The solution
To advance reconciliation and enhance water sustainability, CIER developed the Collaborative Leadership Initiative. This initiative aims to transform community-driven decision making between Indigenous and municipal leaders in watersheds across Canada by helping implement and embed a process for reconciliation-based collaborative governance.
The CLI approach includes three phases:
- Building the foundation for reconciliation
- Formalizing a commitment to work together
- Moving from ideas to action
The process in action
In 2017, CIER brought the CLI model to the province of Manitoba. The CLI Manitoba process gathered elected leaders from 11 Indigenous governments and 16 municipalities for the first time in 154 years.
That gathering led to the signing of a historic intergovernmental MOU that has encouraged numerous joint initiatives across the Manitoba landscape. Over three years, CLI Manitoba advanced the development of a reconciliation framework while building a co-governance table where government-to-government decisions are made. Learn more
The future
CIER will continue to work with interested partners across Canada. If a region is selected for the CLI process, the organization will assist local partners in developing an approach that meets the needs of participating leaders and their communities.
Aligned with its collaborative model, CIER provides its facilitation expertise and technical capacity, while participating leaders contribute their time and or in-kind resources to the process.
BHP Foundation continues to support CIER through this phase of advancing reconciliation and good governance. “To date, the impact of the CLI initiative has been demonstrable and lays the groundwork for the way we all wish to see reconciliation take root across the country”, said Alyna Wyatt, BHP Foundation's Canada Program Director.
“By supporting CIER to implement, scale and support the CLI models across multiple regions, they would be able to build the momentum and recognition needed to show how reconciliation can happen across the country between Indigenous leaders, local and provincial government and business towards greater water stewardship and beyond.”
The Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER) and its Collaborative Leadership Initiative are supported by the BHP Foundation’s Canada program, which aims to help improving the governance and management of water resources to meet the needs of local communities. Learn more
