Climate change and Indigenous peoples

Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples describes how climate change disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples around the world when compared to non-Indigenous peoples.^[1] These impacts are particularly felt in relation to health, environments, and communities. Some Indigenous scholars of climate change argue that these disproportionately felt impacts are linked to ongoing forms of colonialism.^[1] Indigenous peoples found throughout the world have strategies and traditional knowledge to adapt to climate change, through their understanding and preservation of their environment.^[2] These knowledge systems can be beneficial for their own community's adaptation to climate change as expressions of self-determination as well as to non-Indigenous communities.^[2]

The majority of the world's biodiversity is located within Indigenous territories.^[3] More specifically, despite only making up less than 5% of the world's population, Indigenous people protect 80% of the world's biodiversity.^[3] There are over 370 million Indigenous peoples^[4] found across 90+ countries.^[5] Approximately 22% of the planet's land is Indigenous territories, with this figure varying slightly depending on how both indigeneity and land-use are defined.^[6] Indigenous peoples play a crucial role as the main knowledge keepers within their communities.^[2] This knowledge includes that which relates to the maintenance of social-ecological systems.^[7] The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People recognizes that Indigenous people have specific knowledge, traditional practices, and cultural customs that can contribute to the proper and sustainable management of ecological resources.^[8]

Indigenous peoples have myriad experiences with the effects of climate change because of the wide-ranging geographical areas they inhabit across the globe and because their cultures and livelihoods tend to be tied to land-based practices and relations that challenge Western perceptions of nature as property or as a resource.^[9] Indigenous peoples have a wide variety of experiences that science is beginning to include in its research of climate change and its potential solutions. As a result of this inclusion, the concepts of traditional knowledge and traditional practices are increasingly respected and considered in scientific research.^[10]