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Symposium: Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change

Thursday and Friday, 12-13 April 2007
Environmental Change Institute
University of Oxford

Indigenous peoples are only rarely considered in the academic, policy and public discourse on climate change, despite the fact that they will be greatly impacted by impending changes. Indigenous livelihoods depend directly on natural resources. The neglect shows our failure to appreciate the crucial role that indigenous and local peoples can play in our response and adaptation to climate changes. Indigenous knowledge includes a myriad of natural resource management practices. The aim of the symposium on indigenous peoples and climate change, held at the ECI on April 12-13, was to address this gap. For two days researchers from various disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to the natural and physical sciences, as well as representatives of non-profit organisations such as IUCN and Bioversity International discussed how indigenous and other local peoples are impacted by climate changes, and how they perceive and react to these changes.

The opening session consisted of a general overview of climate change impacts and implications on the global scale. Director of the ECI, Prof. Diana Liverman, began the session by reviewing recent publications, such as the Stern and IPCC reports; global, British and EU policy developments; and initiatives developed by non-state actors such as corporations, cities and NGOs. Thereafter, specialists gave scientific overviews of past and future climate changes (presented respectively by Prof. John Birks, University College London, and Dr. Dave Frame, ECI), and on the roles of biodiversity in mitigating and coping with natural disasters (Dr. Pablo Eyzaguirre, Bioversity International).

The following presentations addressed regional and local studies on impacts of and adaptation to climate change. Indigenous people from various regions with diverse climate change problems were discussed including:

• indigenous and local people of tropical rain forests threatened by increasing droughts and fires (Dr. Yadvinder Malhi, ECI, Dr. Miguel Pinédo-Vasquez, Columbia University, New York, Dr. Laura Rival, Department of International Delvelopment, University of Oxford)
• islanders facing inundation and violent storms (Prof. Will McClatchey,University of Hawai’i, Prof. Robert Whittaker, Oxford University Centre for the Environment)
• desert and dryland peoples on the brink (Prof. Paul Minnis, University of Oklahoma, Dr. Richard Washington, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Susannah Sallu, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Lars Otto Naess, Tyndall Centre, University of East Anglia)
• high mountains cultures threatened by retreating glaciers and changing resource bases (Prof. Jan Salick, Environmental Change Institute and Missouri Botanical Garden, Anja Christanell, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Dr. Anja Byg, ECI, Prof. Georg Grabherr, University of Vienna)
• temperate cultures monitoring changes and worrying about their futures (Prof. Nancy Turner, University of Victoria, Canada, Dr. Anna Lawrence, ECI, Dr. Pam Berry, ECI)
• with reference to the well known case of polar peoples on the melting ice shield and permifrost.

Recurrent topics were the role that indigenous and local peoples play in maintaining and strengthening the resilience of healthy ecosystems, as well as the spiritual, emotional and moral implications of climate changes to local peoples. Furthermore, the presentations stressed the multifaceted nature of climate changes, not only in the wide variety of impacts, but also in the interplay with other processes such as inter-annual variation, habitat fragmentation, loss of biodiversity, disempowerment, insecurity, and lack of understanding.

The symposium ended with a continuing planning session on conjoined research and action for and by indigenous and local peoples to afford them more prominence in the international climate change discussion and action.