What you need to know about... Indigenous communities as victims and leaders in the climate crisis

By Bianca Pasca

Following our event on ‘Race Empire and Climate change’ which explained how the global north’s responsibility for and failure to respond sufficiently to the climate crisis constitutes a form of neo-colonialism, this week’s “What you need to know about…” post will focus on the impact of climate change on indigenous communities who are not mere victims but potential leaders in the fight against the climate crisis.

This article will explain:

1. The impact of climate change and human activity causing climate change on indigenous communities
2. How even climate change mitigation strategies harm indigenous communities
3. How listening to indigenous communities and protecting their interests can help tackle climate change

 

1. Direct impacts of climate change

Indigenous communities are particularly dependent on the natural environment, so they are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This results in heightened vulnerability due to:
Food shortages

• Changes to animal populations (migrating patterns, extinctions etc) will be harshly felt by fishers/hunters, while the pollution of land/waters will have a damaging impact, as well.

Eg.  in Finland, Norway and Sweden, rain and mild weather caused by global warming prevents reindeer from accessing lichen, is a vital food source, thus causing a drop in the reindeer population. This has drastically impacted the Saami communities who depend on reindeer for their material survival and cultural identity.

• Flooding of the routes taken by communities living in remote areas mean that they will have to live isolated for long periods of time, limiting access to fresh food or other goods

Cultural heritage

• The extraction of natural resources and natural disasters (flooding, cyclones…) can destroy cultural heritages, sites of worship very important to the community’s sense of identity
• Furthermore, for indigenous people, the land itself is imbued with cultural and spiritual significance therefore environmental damage is felt as an attack on their own identity
• Their profound connection with the land and environment makes it harder for indigenous populations to simply relocate to a different place in response to climate change or displacement by resource extraction

Water supplies

• A drying climate means that in arid or coastal places, some of the sources of water will be contaminated by the intruding salt water and sea level rise as is the case in south Asia

Natural Disaster relief

• Indigenous communities often live in environments which are more prone to intense/frequent extreme weather conditions such as small islands, tropical forests, high-altitude zones, coasts, desert margins. Given many of these areas are isolated it's harder for indigenous populations to receive disaster relief

 
     2)  How even climate change mitigation strategies harm indigenous communities
Biofuels- biofuels are less damaging than fossil fuels because they are carbon neutral, the CO2 released when they are burnt as fuel is balanced by the CO2 absorbed the tress before they are processed into fuel.

• The expansion of oil palm plantations for biofuels (and the food sector) in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea has led to the displacement of indigenous and other forest people
• Burning of forests in order to plant biofuels in Indonesia has increased the local incidence of respiratory diseases.

 
    3) Why listening to indigenous communities can help tackle the climate crisis
Marginalisation of indigenous communities is of course a threat to their survival as their interests are not represented on the world stage. Yet it’s also detrimental to our collective efforts to tackle climate change as we could learn much from understanding the special relationship indigenous people have with the natural environment. Eg:
·       Flooding - In Bangladesh, villagers are creating floating vegetable gardens to protect their livelihoods from flooding
·       Tropical storms- in Vietnam, communities are helping to plant dense mangroves along the coast to diffuse tropical-storm waves.
·       Droughts- In Guyana indigenous communities are relocating form the savannah to forest areas during floods and are planting their staple crop, cassava on moist flood plains where other crops are unable to survive.
Unfortunately, the example set by indigenous communities falls into oblivion because their traditional knowledge is largely oral and remains outside of academic forums, thereby remaining marginalized in literature such as the IPCC reports.  
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    Human rights-Indigenous communities are also leading the way in making governments accountable for climate change by making a link between inaction and violation of human rights. For example, indigenous Australians from the Torres Strait islands are filing a complaint to the UN that identifies the Australian government’s failure to mitigate the impact of climate change as a violation of their human rights.

The UN’s ruling is non-binding but may succeed in pressuring the Australian government into action, proving that platforming indigenous people and the protection of their rights and interests is fundamentally linked to the fight against climate change. 

https://unu.edu/publications/articles/why-traditional-knowledge-holds-the-key-to-climate-change.html
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11027-012-9402-6
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/13/asia-pacific/indigenous-australians-challenge-government-u-n-climate-change-human-rights-violation/#.Xe-EsYhzw2w
https://www.clientearth.org/human-rights-and-climate-change-world-first-case-to-protect-indigenous-australians/
http://srenvironment.org/sites/default/files/Reports/2018/Greenpeace.pdf
https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/climate-change.html