Global Exchange / By Tom B.K. Goldtooth,

The topic of the green economy and sustainability demonstrates the differences between the money-centered Western views and indigenous life-centered worldview of our relationship to the sacredness of the female creative principles of Mother Earth. Many of our Indigenous peoples around the world are deeply concerned that the economic globalization model treats Mother Earth, nature, as a resource for the marketplace to own, privatize and exploit for maximized financial return. This development model displaces Indigenous peoples from their lands, cultures and spiritual relationship to Mother Earth, as well as destroys the life-sustaining capacity of nature and the ecosystem.

The green economy is nothing more than capitalism of nature. The 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which is promoting a green economy, is the next step in the evolution of capitalism. The goal is to implement an alternative to global regimes cashing in on creation by privatizing, commodifying and selling off all forms of life - including air, water and genes, plants, traditional seeds, trees, biological and cultural diversity, ecosystems and even indigenous traditional knowledge.

The green economy is the mechanism for new ways to sell nature, including UN and World Bank initiatives such as REDD-plus (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the Clean Development Mechanism, carbon trading, PES (Payments for Environmental Services), the International Regime on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing, patents on life, TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), natural capital, green bonds and species banking. This economic system greenwashes environmentally and socially devastating, extractive industries like logging, mining and oil drilling, and promotes them as "sustainable development."