When I was a child growing up in Chad, I learned to read the world before I ever read a book. With my grandmother’s guidance, I learned to watch the sky and understand when the rains would come. I learned to listen to the wind and recognize when the cattle needed to move to more fertile land. I learned from my elders that land is not property, it is memory. It is identity. It is responsibility.
Years later, when I began sitting in international climate negotiations, I was struck by a painful contrast. In rooms filled with experts, graphs, and projections about the future of the planet, I rarely heard the voices of the people who have safeguarded ecosystems for generations, those who never had a chance to go to university but are environmental experts. I saw maps of our territories labeled “carbon sinks.” I heard discussions about “natural resources.” I did not hear anyone call them sacred lands.
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What would the world look like if everything finally went right? It would look like a world that understands that Indigenous Peoples were never the problem to solve. We are part of the solution the planet has been waiting for.
For decades, Indigenous communities have served as protectors of the world’s remaining biodiversity. This is not accidental. It is the result of governance systems rooted in reciprocity and long-term thinking. Yet too often, we are treated as vulnerable populations rather than as leaders. If everything goes right, that imbalance shifts.
I think about the women in my community, my cousins, my aunties, my nieces, my grandma, who rise before the sun to gather water, who know which plants heal and which nourish, who manage family economies with resilience and dignity. They are climate experts. But they will never call themselves that. They will simply say they are protecting life.
In the right world, they would not have to navigate impossible funding systems written in foreign languages to receive support. Climate finance would reach them directly without intermediaries. Trust would replace bureaucracy. Partnership would replace paternalism. When communities have secure land rights and the means to manage their territories, deforestation drops. Biodiversity thrives. Conflict decreases. The climate benefits. This is not ideology. It is evidence, and I have experienced it.
If everything goes right, governments would stop debating whether Indigenous Peoples’ land tenure is “efficient” and instead recognize it as essential climate infrastructure. Corporations would understand that a “green transition” cannot repeat the violence of the fossil-fuel era by dispossessing communities for minerals and megaprojects. Renewable energy would not come at the cost of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and lives.
Today, development is often measured by extraction and expansion. But in my culture, wealth has never meant accumulation. It has meant balance. Enough pasture to regenerate. Enough water to share. Never so much your neighbor goes without. In the world I imagine, where everything goes right, the economy would learn from that principle of enough. This is not romanticism. It is survival.
Not only for us and our culture, but for all humanity. Climate change is already reshaping the Sahel, where I come from. Seasons are unpredictable. Droughts are longer. Floods are harsher. Communities who have contributed almost nothing to global emissions are paying the highest price. Yet, in those same communities, I see extraordinary innovation from traditional knowledge combined with new tools, youth organizing across regions, women leading food security. Imagine what would be possible if that leadership were resourced at scale.
If everything goes right, Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and leadership would not be an afterthought. It would shape policy from the beginning.
When thinking about the next generation, my parents taught me to think bigger: about the seven passed and the seven upcoming generations. I think about young Indigenous girls who watch global leaders on television and wonder whether they belong in those rooms. I want them to grow up in a world where they do not have to choose between their culture and their ambition.
If everything goes right, those girls will inherit more than climate targets and policy frameworks. They will inherit dignity. When you plan for seven generations ahead, you cannot afford cynicism. You must think long term. You must act with responsibility.
The barrier to this future is not knowledge. It is political will. It is about how we relate to land. To one another. The future we need is not a technological miracle. It is a moral one. And if we choose that path, if we trust Indigenous Peoples’ leadership, secure land rights, fund communities directly, and redefine well-being beyond profit, then the future is not something we fear. It is something we build together.
When I imagine that future, I do not see something radical. I see something ancient. I see balance restored. And I know it is still within reach if we are brave enough to listen.
Ibrahim is the president of the Indigenous Women & Peoples Association of Chad.
