Global guidelines, local interpretations: ethnography of climate policy implementation in Mapuche territory, Southern Chile

The climate vulnerability of Indigenous Peoples is closely related to their marginalization from decision-making processes. Although the engagement of Indigenous Peoples in climate policy is increasingly promoted at the international level, there are still multiple barriers to their meaningful participation at the national level. Through an ethnography of the State, this article analyses how both the State's political orientation, and its interpretations of different stakeholders, influence the participation of Mapuche-Pehuenche communities in two mitigation projects implemented in Lonquimay, Chile, in the southern Andes. This study is based on a review of State policies for Indigenous Peoples, participant observations of the mitigation projects’ implementation, and qualitative data collected through 26 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. The study uses an ethnographic approach to allow an understanding of how the State is constructed in the face of climate change and of Indigenous Peoples’ vulnerability. The State project, which shapes the relationship of the Mapuche with their territory, with the State, and among themselves, is reflected in policy implementation patterns and the existing economic development model. All these relationships influence how officials and the Mapuche interpret and implement climate policy. This article demonstrates that by neglecting these relationships, climate policy risks being less effective in part as it reinforces the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples. While Indigenous Peoples’ participation poses significant intercultural challenges, it also yields valuable lessons that can promote processes of institutional transformation that contribute to climate mitigation, such as strengthening local capacities and questioning beliefs that have led to climate change.Indigenous Peoples’ recognition and early participation in climate policy have a transformative potential.Counterproductive patterns of policy implementation in Indigenous Peoples’ territories constrain climate policy coherence.To promote the meaningful engagement of Indigenous Peoples in climate policy, states must address long-standing conflicts and underlying factors that produce contextual vulnerability to climate change, while strengthening the intercultural competencies that allow a respectful approach to Indigenous knowledge systems and protocols.Officials must be open to transforming their own knowledge, practices, and values to put climate policy at the service of Indigenous communities.