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With deep connections to nature,
the world's Indigenous peoples and local communities
are experiencing some of the most pronounced affects of climate change.
This video documents a United Nations process
that is bringing together traditional communities and climate change scientists,
especially at two conferences held in Mexico and Australia.
I came here today to listen
because these other indigenous peoples are very strong in their culture
We witnessed a dialogue of different cultures.
This series focuses on some of the key links between
traditional knowledge and science
and the policy solutions being workshopped.
The scientists are beginning to say, Hmmm, there's something we need to know
as science is based on what its based on observation,
and the traditional knowedge also somehow is based on observation.
Indigenous peoples have something to contribute in terms solutions
to the problem of climate change.
Land use change and Adaptation
Cairns, Australia
One of the key areas discussed at the conferences
included environmental impacts and community adaptations
associated with climate change.
Indigenous leader, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, pointed out
that indigenous knowledge is fine-tuned to local contexts
and is essential for climate change adaptation
and long-term community resilience.
(Vicky Tauli--Corpuz, Phillipines)I think the evidence shows that
many of the ecosystems which are still intact
are found in indigenous peoples' territories.
One possible reason for that is because of course the low carbon lifestyle,
the sustainable lifestyles of indigenous peoples.
The other reason is because they use their traditional knowledge
to be in sync with nature's processes.
Indigenous peoples live in almost every region of the world.
Their territories cover 22% of the world's land mass
and contain 80% of the world's biodiversity.
One of the ways indigenous knowledge is working with climate science
is by offering observations and interpretations at a very fine localized scale.
IPCC Working Group 3 Chair, Youba Sokona, explains:
(Youba Sokona, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Because we need more and more,
to have different early warning systems
and in most of the traditions they have some early warning system
on any extreme event that will happen,
because they do have some sign,
as science is based on what? It's based on observation
and the traditional knowledge also, somehow, is based on observation.
Human beings have been paying attention to their environment for a long time
and we would do well to pay attention to those
who've been paying attention to where we live now for a long time...
and that would be the native communities.
By recognizing signs such as wind direction,
rainfall, temperature change, celestial movement,
animal behaviour and the flowering of plants,
many communities organize their lives around seasonal calendars.
Varying widely across the world, traditional calendars play an important role
in how communities interpret and respond to shifts in climate patterns.
So we use our indicators, the plants and the animals,
to monitor the weather and this is how we work on the land.
It is helpful to design our own calendar,
which is a great thing to say
when it's ready for us to hunt and gather
because there is a space of breeding
and there's a space of timeout for people and animal.
Participants at the UN conferences shared accounts
of some of the impacts of climate change on local communities.
(Igor Krupnik, USA) The things that people used to know,
used to operate with, used to rely upon
are not working anymore, almost everywhere,
and that to me is probably the strongest confirmation we have
of really dramatic changes that are happening
in global ecosystems in plural.
Climate change is disrupting subsistence culture,
because subsistence cultures depend upon intact habitats
and that's what climate change is disrupting...intact habitats.
Marilyn Wallace from Australia,
related how habitat shifts and a changing climate
are transforming relationships within her rainforest homelands.
We are frightened, very frightened.
Our food is scarce, the food cycles are all shifting
and we don't now what will happen.
Our food is disappearing
and our understanding of country is transforming.
In East Africa, the Masaai peoples are
recognizing rainfall regime changes.
(Oloodo Saitaga - Kenya) Our climate is changing,
it has become unpredictable.
A long time ago, we used to know which months there would be rain.
Now it's hard to predict when there will be rain or not.
In the Andes, mountain communities are witnessing
water cycle fluctuations.
(Saturnina Melo Melo, Peru) Rivers live, everything lives.
It's just that they cannot speak, or sometimes we don't understand them.
However, if you listen and understand, you can hear the river as if it were chanting.
In the cultivating months, rivers play the flute.
At carnival, rivers play carnival music.
At Easter time, they play the mandolin and guitar. Sometimes that happens behind my house.
Nowdays, no one is paying attention to the rivers and they are getting sad and hungry.
Just as we walk around hungry, with no one to offer us anything.
They are hungry, too. That is why they go out of their way, looking for food.
Creating landslides, crushing and eating people for ignoring them.
In the Pacific, frequent hurricanes and rising king tides
are affecting food security and health.
(Nikolas Hakata, Papua New Guinea) This is the middle of the island.
The sea recently passed through here and continued almost to the other side.
It destroyed everything
in people's gardens.
After this happened, our people were starving.
These invading king tides have left a swamp where the mosquitoes are now breeding.
Now, there are many more mosquitoes than usual,
and all the children are sick with Malaria.
Snowchange, conveyed some of the observations of local
and indigenous communities in the Arctic.
(Tero Mustonen, Finland) The most important message
that we wish to present here is
the observation and confirmed melting of the permaforst in Siberia,
which is leading to an uncontrolled release of
millions of tonnes of new greenhouse gases,
which are currently trapped in the siberian permafrost.
One of the Snowchange delegates, Siberian reindeer herder Peyotr Kaurgin,
relays some of the changes observed by his people.
There are many signs appearing...
(Peyotr Kaurgin, Russia) the river ice break-up begins earlier,
and the birds are flying towards us about 1.5 weeks earlier.
The permafrost melt is preventing the migrating reindeer herders
from reaching the Northern Arctic coastline.
Earlier, we used to migrate in July, and by mid-July we would reach the coast.
But now, we are unable to reach the coast by about 150km.
Peyotr recounted that near the coastlines,
solid ground is turning into swamp,
and the warm humid summers are bringing necrobacillosis,
a footroot disease, to the reindeer herds.
Because the pastures are infected, we avoid going through them for 5 or 6 years.
On the other side of the Arctic, the Inupiaq people's ancient relationship
with the bowhead whale is being affected by the melting sea ice.
Cultural researcher, Doctor Chie Sakakibara,
has been working with the Inupiaq people.
(Chie Sakakibara, USA) Now that the temperature is rising,
the environment is getting too warm for the bowhead whales to survive
in the area that's near the coast,
which means close to the villages.
So, Inupiaq whalers now have to go out
to the open water, 50 miles or 60 miles,
which would require them to incorporate technologies
such as motorized boats, engines,
fuels and many other aspects.
And how does this influence human-whale relationship?
Around the world, rapid environmental shifts
associated with climate change are challenging cultural identities.
At an adaptation meeting in Mexico, Native American scientist
and IPCC author Margaret Redsteer, explains,
(Margaret Redsteet, USA)And it's really heartbreaking for a lot of the people who are
the ceremonialists on the reservation,
and in part because there are so many changes that are occurring
that they don't know what to do about.
For instance, there are people who go to the springs
and make offerings for rain,
but the springs that they have gone to all their lives
to make offerings don't flow anymore,
so they are kind of at a loss of what to do.
There are communities now in the US, native communities,
looking 100, 200, 300 miles south of them
to see what plants are similar to the plants that are thriving today,
because those plants may no longer thrive on their reservations tomorrow.
And they are looking to see what relatives they may be able to move,
they may be able to assist from other places, other ecozones,
and bring them to there and work with nature,
work with the resilience that nature has in terms of that
Organised governments and NGOS,
indigenous or not,
need to be open to those kinds of adaptations
and mitigation measures that can increase the biodioversity
and strengthening, healing, that web of life
that has been torn asunder by
the climate changes and the impacts that we are seeing.
If we don't follow these protocols,
the seasonal calendar which we have designed,
it'll affect us physically, emotionally and spiritually
and today, going back on country is part of our beginning.
It is healing for us;
we are the young generations going back on country
and taking up our obligation, our rights,
our interests of development.
Communities say that recognition of land and resource rights
is essential in building adaptive capacity
and strengthening a community's climate resilience.
Further, to fortify this resilience,
communities are proactively developing their knowledge,
through respectful exchanges with scientists.
For example, at a climate mitigation conference,
Jeremy Russell-Smith showed how traditional fire management practices
were scientifically enhanced to enable traditional owners to continue
caring for their lands whilst at the same time
reducing wildfire greenhouse gas emissions.
(Jeremy Russell-Smith, Australia)There's been a radical shift in the way we think
about how the north of Australia should be managed with fire.
There's a far greater acceptance that
customary management is appropriate and needs to be encouraged.
(Dean Yibarbuk, Australia)We should see young Callitris (trees) here
but there are none.
Why?
Wildfire.
We haven't been here managing fire
so destructive fires have come.
And if you looked at this Western Arnhem Land fire project,
you'd have to say it has been successful in so many ways
and largely because right from the outset,
it had the full authority of the cultural governance arrangement.
These senior traditional owners were very supportive
of the needing to actually get together a program
which would be inclusive,
representative of their cultural needs,
but knowing that it had to become sustainable in the longer term.
We proved that if we burn in patches
and at different times of day
we can control the spread and intensity of fires.
And this way of burning
makes much less greenhouse gases.
Scientists from Venezuela are also seeing the
inter-regional potential of fire abatement.
(Bibiana Bilbao, Venuzuela)The experience that they have in Australia
covers a wider territory, but it's impressive
how the traditional mechanisms
of fire management are identical
between the Indigenous Australians and the Amerindios
even though we are so far apart and in two different continents.
There were some UN conference delegates
that expressed concern about the history of
scientific engagement with local communities.
(Oladimeji Oladele, South Africa) Many technologies or innovations
that have been introduced, they have left people worse off
all in the name of science.
Things were introduced, for example, mechansization introduced in Africa
knowing fully well that the top soil is not that heavy
to be able to use this equipment, then we are worse off for it.
And it is always better if you come
at the participatory or the bottom-up approach,
looking at what people are already doing
what is the impact of that,
and why are they still keeping to it,
and why has it been able to sustain them over the years,
even before the advent of science
or the introduction of science on that particular issue.
In Mexico, Fernado Briones, who works with Chiapas farming communities,
explores the potential regional climate knowledge exchanges.
(Fernando Briones, Mexico)There's not a lot of interaction between scientific models
and traditional knowledge of climate,
but there's a huge potential over there
because if rain patterns are changing
and the farmers may have the information,
they may choose a better time to plant.
So, definitely, we need to develop early warning systems.
Innovative climate adaptations in the Arctic,
include local to global environmental monitoring projects
developing between reindeer herders and NASA.
(Nancy Maynard, USA)It's a real pleasure to interact with the
reindeer herders because they contribute so much information
about what's going on, on the ground.
One of our NASA projects is to try to use
microwave radiometry to perhaps detect rain on snow
and in fact we found that the indigenous knowledge,
that is, the reindeer herders on the ground,
were able to identify in our satellite imagery
those areas where indeed it had rained.
A key threat to herders, rains that freeze on snow
form a strong ice layer across the ground,
sometimes causing starvation amongst the reindeer.
And it might serve as an early warning device
for the reindeer herders so that they don't take their herds
in that major area, where there's a strong ice layer.
(Mikhail Pogodaev, Russia)We established a few resource information centres
in the reindeer herding regions
and it means that these reindeer herding regions,
they now participating in a kind of big network.
Knowledge development is most important in face of climate change.
The arctic Inupiaq People are also working collaboratively with scientists.
They go out on the field together
and indigenous people become not only the guide for the scientist,
but they also become mentors for the scientists,
and tell them, teach them how to navigate on the sea ice,
how to interpret animal behaviours,
and many other environmental features that exist on the northern land.
In the face of increasing climate instability,
the recognition of indigenous rights
and respectful two-way knowledge collaborations
are contributing to building better early warning systems
and supporting local efforts towards climate resilience.
For full interviews and support materials: