- Indigenous peoples and local communities are reporting a series of tangible and nuanced impacts of climate change, according to a new study.
- The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in sites across all inhabited continents and aggregated the reports into 369 indicators of climate change impacts, including changes in precipitation, plant cultivation and marine ecosystems.
- Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people experience and observe environmental changes, according to the authors. For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change awareness, sensitivity and vulnerability.
- This research constitutes the largest global effort by Indigenous peoples and local communities to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts.
Indigenous peoples and local communities are already feeling the impacts of climate change, according to firsthand accounts documented in a new study.
The authors of the paper, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, say the data provide evidence that climate change impacts on Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are tangible, widespread and affect multiple elements of their ecosystems.
“There is the idea existing in the scientific community that local knowledge is not a valid source of knowledge, and the study aims to bridge this gap,” says Victoria Reyes-García, research professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and lead author of the study.
The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in 48 sites inhabited by Indigenous peoples and local communities, covering all climate zones and nature-dependent livelihoods across all inhabited continents. The research is the largest global effort to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts by IPLCs.
Based on the information collected, Indigenous peoples and local communities across all continents are facing nuanced impacts of climate change that are hyperlocal.
Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people understand and experience these environmental impacts, according to the study. This limits researchers in their risk analysis and adaptation planning, the researchers say.
For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change sensitivity and vulnerability. This underscores the significance of incorporating local knowledge and experience in climate research and policy for better climate adaption strategies, they say.
By gathering IPLC reports, they documented 369 local indicators of climate change impacts: 94 indicators of climate change (referring to changes in elements of the atmospheric system) and 275 indicators of climate change impacts (referring to changes in elements of the physical and the life systems).
The authors note that the study’s method isn’t able to discern whether the reported impacts can be fully attributed to climate change. Other intermingling environmental factors, such as land use change and overextraction of resources, make it difficult. Rather, climate change is understood as one driver, among multiple others, that exacerbate the environmental changes experienced by communities.
About 20% of reports showed changes in precipitation, especially in areas where agriculture prevailed. However, changes in air masses and impacts on marine ecosystems were more frequently observed in sites where fishing rivaled other livelihoods. Indicators referring to changes in freshwater were higher in tropical climates than in polar climates. But, the average number of indicators referring to impacts in pastures and grasslands was significantly higher in arid and polar climates than in tropical climates. And impacts on pastures, grasslands and land cover were more frequent where pastoralism dominated.
According to the report, these finding provide a basis to the previously untested hypothesis that the way local people interact with the environment through livelihood activities is an important predictor of the changes they observe.
“Many studies have previously focused on Indigenous and local knowledge and its relation to climate change,” García tells Mongabay. “But this study is a way to allow the collection of local data and documenting it in a way where you could bring together collective case studies of climate change impacts from local and diverse regions.”
Documented impacts
For García, the study process itself was a learning experience. She observed the nuances of the impacts interacting with other drivers of change local people have been facing in their daily lives.
In Kenya’s Lake Turkana, which was one of the study sites, García says the impacts of erratic rains have made lives tougher for the lake-dependent Indigenous and local communities that already lack access to agricultural lands. The lake depends on the Omo River, which provides 90% of its water, but as projects such as large-scale commercial agriculture change the river’s flow and input, the livelihoods of people engaged in fishing, pastoralism and agropastoralism are hit hard.
“There’s less rain, but if at least they had enough water from the rivers, if at least they had the access to the land, then they said they could have dealt with this,” García says. “Climate change itself is not the main worry of people, but its effects are: The changes in water systems, deforestation, increased mining activities, all these things are having a larger impact, which are very subjective to each community.”
At one of the study sites in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, the Indigenous Yucatán people who have highly depended on groundwater sources for generations are facing problems with reduced access to freshwater for sustenance as the quality of groundwater begins to degrade. The lens of the groundwater basin recedes when the dry season starts and there is more salinization of the aquifers.
“The changes in the Earth’s systems mean the salty seawater is mixed with the freshwater impacting more than 2 million Yucatán people in the peninsula,” says Yolanda López-Maldonado, an Indigenous researcher and one of the study authors from the Yucatán community in Mexico.
In Sri Lanka, farmers in East Coast Vedda reported changes in groundwater quality and lower water levels in village tanks, while agriculturalists in Milot in Haiti reported the drying of lakes, wells and an increase in river sediments with larger but more erratic floods.
In Fiji, iTaukei Indigenous fishers reported an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones, Catalan fishers in Costa Brava in Spain reported changes in coastal storms with fast winds and strong waves and Swahili fishers in Kenya’s South Coast reported an increase in seawater temperatures during the Kaskazi (wind) season, resulting in increased shell mortality. Meanwhile, in China, Mongolian pastoralists say drier conditions are increasing the presence of nonedible grasses for their livestock.
Including these local reports and observations in global analysis of resources like groundwater, which are difficult to measure and monitor, can improve knowledge of climate change impacts, says López-Maldonado.
“For example, hydrologists use isotopic tracers, which are systems that can help you understand flow contaminants,” she says. “But the life of those tracers is very short. Recording and combining this data and knowledge at a local level can have better results for understanding the flows of contaminants, pesticides or heavy metals in a particular basin [by] comparing the local and global perspective.”
The authors say that local reports could help identify feasible and locally relevant adaptation plans and interventions.
“The Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) is one funding mechanism that supports special initiatives that prioritize local adaptation action involving Indigenous peoples and local communities. Last year, the Global Environment Facility launched the Inclusive GEF Assembly Challenge Program which aimed to recognize and support local-level action by civil society organizations in delivering adaptation benefits for communities and conserving biodiversity,” a GEF spokesperson tells Mongabay.
At the 2023 U.N. climate conference, nations also agreed to a loss and damage fund, hosted by the World Bank, to help the countries most impacted by climate change. While this move is welcome, leaders of Indigenous and locals communities say accessing such multilateral funds and making sure they address their specific needs has historically been difficult.
But it’s not only money that is needed, says García. Addressing the root cause of issues threatening communities’ rights and access to resources is also needed for actual adaptation.
“The right situation plays an important role in how these communities learn to adapt,” she says. “If there are extreme weather conditions and a protected area is marked that prohibits community people or restricts access to their ancestral lands, there is no room for adaptation.”
Banner image: A man from the Vedda community in Sri Lanka. Image by Garret Clarke via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
Indigenous peoples undersupported on frontline of hotter, drier, fiery world
Citation:
Reyes-García, V., Garcia-del-Amo, D., Álvarez-Fernández, S., Benyei, P., Calvet-Mir, L., Junqueira, A. B., … Zakari, I. S. (2024). Indigenous Peoples and local communities report ongoing and widespread climate change impacts on local social-ecological systems. Communications Earth & Environment. doi:10.1038/s43247-023-01164-y
