Indigenous people’s extensive understanding of both environmental impacts and adaptation strategies “should be recognized by both science and climate policy,” researchers argued in a new analysis.
The analysis was released on Wednesday, coinciding with the United Nations annual tribute to Indigenous populations.
“We celebrate young Indigenous Peoples, and their role in creating change and shaping the future,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a Wednesday statement. “They are leaders in the global climate action movement.”
There are an estimated 476 million Indigenous individuals spread across 90 nations, according to the U.N. And although these people represent only 5 percent of the global population, they comprise 15 percent of the world’s poorest inhabitants.
Yet Indigenous populations have an outsized responsibility when it comes to natural resources: They protect about 80 percent of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity, as highlighted by the World Economic Forum in a post prior to the U.N. celebratory day.
Describing Indigenous individuals as “experts at small-scale community food production,” the post stressed how crucial these methods could be to ensuring a sustainable food supply in the future.
While Indigenous Peoples and local communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, they often have a nuanced awareness when it comes to coping with these shifts, the authors of Wednesday’s analysis agreed.
“Connected with their natural environment across generations, they have a holistic understanding of the cascading effects of climate change impacts,” lead researcher Victoria Reyes-García, of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, said in a statement.
That expertise, she explained, extends “from changes in atmospheric, physical and biological systems to impacts on their livelihoods.”
Reyes-García and her colleagues at the Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts project spent five years combing through 52 case studies in Indigenous and local communities, who often depend on nature-based livelihoods.
They explored a wide range of issues, including how weather instability jeopardizes farming, the increasing risk of sea-ice hunting, how changing tides are thwarting octopi catches and the difficulties reindeer herders face on the job.
Up against such challenges, many Indigenous individuals have implemented adaptive responses that the scientists believe could help inspire similar such pathways in other vulnerable communities.
Yet despite the role of Indigenous people “as legitimate custodians of knowledge regarding climate change,” their expertise is not usually incorporated into climate change reporting and policies, according to the analysis.
“Indigenous Peoples and local communities should have a more central role in the scientific and political processes of understanding and adapting to climate change,” the authors concluded.
