Financing Alaska's Just Transition

VALUES TO GUIDE FINANCING ALASKA'S JUST TRANSITION

These values directly build on Regenerative

Finance's Regenerative

Economy Values.

BUILD COMMUNITY WEALTH

Invest in frontline Alaskan communities that are bearing the worst impacts and paying the cost of supporting hollow and temporary wealth for our state, nation, and the oil industry. Return profit that has been extracted and give these communities decision-making power over capital.

SHIFT ECONOMIC CONTROL

The communities determine the structures and terms of investments based on their needs. Metrics of success include community health indicators as well as health of ecosystems.

DEMOCRATIZE THE WORKPLACE

Experiment or revitalize what community ownership structures look like in Alaska. Consider how existing corporations can transition and become worker-owned cooperatives or B Corporations and in general divest from the extractive economy and invest in the solidarity economy.

DRIVE SOCIAL EQUITY

Wealth redistribution is key to addressing the racial wealth gap. A voluntary land tax could support language revitalization. De-centralized and highly adaptive channels for resources and decision-making power focused on rural Alaska to counteract the concentration of capital and decision making control in urban Alaska (like the proposed Climate Resilience Fund).

ADVANCE REGENERATIVE ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

Indigenous economic frameworks like reciprocity (balanced exchange) and redistribution (for example through potlatches) within overlapping relationships of responsibility and interdependence are critical to inform and restructure Alaskan economies to thrive. These are some of Alaska’s greatest strengths for a Just Transition. Alaskans value self-reliance - hunting, fishing, berry picking, making our own tools, building our own homes, fixing things when they break, and looking out for each other - all of which make our communities more resilient. Care economies, longstanding practices for mutual aid, and holistic frameworks like restorative economics are vital to address intersecting crises of climate, pandemic, and late stage capitalism collapse.

RE-LOCALIZE PRIMARY PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION

Find ways to regeneratively and equitably strengthen regional economies. Return land ownership and resource stewardship to Alaska Native Peoples through comanagement agreements and inter-agency collaboration like the Native Forest Partnership to achieve sustainable hunting, fishing, and harvesting.

STRENGTHEN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Incentivize and require Alaskan industries and Alaska Native Corporations to invest in the public sector. Tax corporations and fund Alaska Native Language Immersion Schools and countless other community led solutions. Eliminate oil subsidies and invest the projected annual $1B of Alaskan taxpayer money in strategic infrastructure like broadband, upgrades for energy efficiency and renewables, and much needed infrastructure for food security and sovereignty that are vital for a Just Transition.

RESTORE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITHIN OURSELVES AND WITH OUR COMMUNITIES

We move through fractured grief towards wholeness and our collective liberation by coming into right relationship with ourselves, our bodies, the land and each other. Organize from a place of joy and lovingly share our vision of a bright and prosperous future for Alaska that is so compelling people are eager to join us. Build people power to address the root causes of oppression and extraction with such forceful clarity that false solutions pale in comparison. Build bridges, not wedges, to bring people together in common purpose with a shared sense of belonging. Believe in the world we are building - it is all around us.

RETAIN CULTURE & TRADITION

Enhance culture, tradition, and economic prosperity that results from, and furthers, the protection of Sacred lands. Investors can begin to make reparations by transferring decision-making power and profit to Alaskan Native Peoples who are most impacted by generations of cishetero-patriarchal white supremacy and capitalist colonization.

RESTORE INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY & PROMOTE DECOLONIZATION

Decolonizing requires making a shared memory and understanding to counteract colonizers’ historical and ecological amnesia in Alaska. It means actively unlearning the many colonial myths that are normalized in the “Last Frontier” and instead advancing sovereignty and self-determination for Alaska Native entities.

APPENDIX I: DEFINITIONS

These definitions are credited to A People's Orientation to a

Regenerative Economy

Regenerative Economy: Rather than extracting from the land and each other, a regenerative economy is consistent with the rights of nature, valuing the health and well-being of Mother Earth by producing, consuming, and redistributing resources in harmony with the planet. A regenerative economy supports collective and inclusive participatory governance, requiring relocalization and democratization of how we produce and consume goods, and ensuring that all have full access to healthy, culturally appropriate food, renewable energy, clean air and water, good jobs, and healthy living environments.

Feminist Economy: Economy focused on eliminating the gendered division of labor and the gender binary that enforces global capitalism’s exploitation and extraction of resources from women and nonbinary people all over the world. In a feminist economy, we recognize, value, and center reproductive labor—low-carbon, community-generating, life-affirming, and skilled work—that is necessary for the well-being of everyone and to sustain human society and nature itself.

Extractive Economy: A capitalist system of exploitation and oppression that values consumerism, colonialism, and money over people and the planet.

Climate Justice: Focuses on the root causes of the climate crisis through an intersectional lens of racism, classism, capitalism, economic injustice, and environmental harm. As a movement, climate justice advocates are working from the grassroots up to create real solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation that ensure the right of all people to live, learn, work, play, and pray in safe, healthy, and clean environments.

Environmental Justice: Embraces the principle that all people have a right to equal protection and equal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. Environmental justice recognizes that, due to racism and class discrimination, communities of color, low-income neighborhoods, and Indigenous nations and communities are the most likely to be disproportionately harmed by toxic chemicals, exposures, economic injustices, and negative land uses, and the least likely to benefit from efforts to improve the environment.

Food Sovereignty: The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, centering their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

APPENDIX I: DEFINITIONS

Frontline Communities: communities directly impacted by extractive and pollutive industries that have been purposely and systemically situated adjacent to and on communities’ land. This disproportionate exposure to climate and environmental injustice results in acute and chronic impacts to human and environmental health. Frontline organizations are those created of, by, and for frontline communities, and are accountable to a base of frontline community members.

Just Recovery: a disaster recovery framework that moves toward transformative solutions that respond, recover, and rebuild. “Respond” means to activate mutual support networks to support communities on the ground to meet the articulated needs of those most impacted and vulnerable. “Recover” means to provide resources and support so that all people can get back their homes and work. “Rebuild” means long-term support to communities so they become stronger than before the disaster and are no longer vulnerable.

Just Transition: a set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a Regenerative Economy. It focuses on ensuring that transition itself is just and equitable, redressing past harms and creating new relationships of power for the future. The Just Transition framework focuses divesting from the exploitation of labor and extraction of resources and investing in cooperative labor and regeneration.

Reproductive Labor: all the work done to create and sustain human life—from giving birth, parenting, and raising children to providing food, shelter, clothing, and care for people who rely on us to meet their physical and emotional needs.

Sacrifice Zones: areas where health, wealth, and lives have been sacrificed to advance the profits of corporations that control polluting industries. They are primarily areas where working class Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white people live.

Translocal Organizing: a model of collective struggle that fosters the consolidation and diffusion of experiences, resources and wisdom across a given set of geographic spaces.

NOTES DAY 1: HEALING TO PROMO AND RE-CENTERING TE HEALTH, EQUITY, OUR AND MOVEME JUSTICE NT MAY 20, 2022

“We need those who will come to the table over and over again, who will probably be hurt and will hurt others, but we’ll heal together and learn and grow. We need those who will intertwine so deeply together that they will understand that the fight for justice must liberate us all. ” Ruth Miller

NOTES DAY 2: REGENERATIVE MAY ECO 21, NOMI 2022 C DEVELOPMENT

“The future must be decentralized. It must be relocalized. It must have food self sufficiency and energy self sufficiency at local levels with fair and just trade agreements. ” Winona LaDuke

NOTES DAY 3: ENVISIONING OUR ACTIO PL N ACE IN COLLECTIVE MAY 22, 2022

“It’s time to find our way back to what our ancestors had. Our people come from just economies, and we need to bring everyone with us, especially those most intent on destroying the Earth because we can’t afford that anymore. ” Karlin Itchoak