Paper short abstract:

SDGs could also be the abbreviation of Sanctioning Disciplined Grabs: The paper shows the options the SDGs provide in legitimizing commons grabbing in indigenous territories as the commons are not mentioned. Sustainability becomes the only task of governments and the private sector.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the issue of the SDGs as becoming a tool of a green development ideology acting as a new form of anti-politics machine to be used by governments to claim territories of local indigenous groups. The SDGs can be used to justify what we call commons grabbing processes because alienation of territories and common property of indigenous groups can be legitimized with the notion of sustainable development. The paper will show that the SDGs provide this option for governments because on the one hand SDGs neglect the common property institutions of indigenous peoples, which in fact helped to maintain biodiverse cultural landscape ecosystems. On the other hand, the SDGs provide governments and private sector actors new options and financial means to implement an environmentally sound development controlled by them. This is evident in conservation and energy policies. Conservation policies were challenged as being a kind of top down fortress conservation, leading to often also top-down co-conservation projects in the past. Now these can be re-shaped again in a more centralized way as common property is not integrated in the SDGs, which is helpful in grabbing indigenous lands. In a similar way, green energy and mega-infrastructure projects on indigenous lands can be legitimized. The paper will address cases from indigenous territories in Latin America, Africa and Europe, which illustrate these processes in the context of conservation and energy projects related to and legitimized by the SDGs. It will also show reactions of indigenous peoples to these sanctioned disciplined grabs.