Indigenous People's Global Summit on Climate Change

There's a major event happening in Anchorage this week. It's so important that even the Anchorage Daily News covered it today.

Hundreds of indigenous people from around the world are gathering in Anchorage this week to discuss climate change and solutions for a warming planet. The Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change, a five-day United Nations-affiliated conference, will run through Friday, with about 400 people from 80 nations expected to attend.

There's no question that modern science doesn't have all the answers and I think that humans, through genetics and through their life experiences, have different levels of risk aversion and tendencies to prefer doing things individually or in groups. These and other factors affect how they react to issues like global warming and whether they prefer collective or individual solutions. And these preferences tend to affect which facts they believe and which they are skeptical of. I have had a link for global warming skeptics on my right side bar for a long time. It addresses just about every argument skeptics raise about climate change.

There are a lot of people who ridicule the idea of global climate change (probably a better term than global warming) because they see themselves negatively impacted if Global Climate Change is more extreme than just natural fluctuations and steps to reduce carbon emissions are taken. They see deterioration of their lifestyle, deterioration of their income, and other dire consequences.

The lifestyles and cultures of indigenous peoples, as materially modest as they have been compared to modern Western lifestyles, have been threatened all over the world as the capitalist economic systems seek natural resources in the local environments of indigenous peoples whether in the Arctic or rain forests or in deserts. (I know that some people will get apoplectic seeing me use a word like 'capitalist' in that previous statement, but I'm merely stating something that I don't think anyone can dispute whether staunch capitalist or diehard socialist.) Western (and Eastern) ideas of legally owned private property are in stark contrast with collective and migratory connections to land of many indigenous peoples. Australian Aboriginal songlines most captivatingly discussed by Bruce Chatwin in his book Songlines, are an alternative way of mapping and of conceiving of how humans and land are related. I'm not saying it is a better way, but it was their way which was in conflict with how the European immigrants to Australian conceived of land.

The website for this week's conference offers a fair amount of background material. One document is a guidebook on climate change for indigenous peoples and I've copied section 12.

12 Guide on Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples

Massive floods, strong hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons and storm surges lead to the destruction of houses, infrastructure (bridges, roads, electrical lines, dams, mine-tailing ponds, etc.), forests, agricultural lands, crops, livestock, marine and coastal resources; massive land slides; loss of freshwater supplies, increase of pathogenic micro-organisms and vectors which are carriers, loss of
electricity, etc.

• These lead to human impacts such as physical isolation because of floods and massive landslides which reduce possibilities for them to market their crops, livestock, marine and coastal resources, etc.; the loss and destruction of ancestral lands, resources and homes, food insecurity and hunger (destruction of crops, destruction of coral reefs and mangroves, and spawning beds of local fish, decrease and loss of livestock, etc.); fresh water-insecurity; energy insecurity; increased prevalence and virulence of infectious diseases such as cholera, etc.
• More frequent and prolonged droughts and floods cause the disappearance of plant and animal species that have sustained indigenous peoples as subsistence food sources or as essential to their ceremonial life.
• Extreme and unprecedented cold spells and prolonged wet environment results to health problems, such as hypothermia, bronchitis and pneumonia, especially among old people and young children.
• A drop in water levels, drought, desertification and saltwater intrusion leads to more hunger and impoverishment. Water and food insecurity is exacerbated.
• Traditional livelihoods ranging from rotational agriculture, hunting and gathering, pastoralism, high montane livestock and agricultural production, coastal and marine fishing, trapping, agro-forestry livelihoods, among others, are undermined because of climate change.
• Adverse impacts on traditional livelihoods and their ecosystem will also mean loss of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices associated with these livelihoods and ecosystems.
• Loss of revenue, economic opportunities and the practice of traditional culture are expected to increase the social and cultural pressures on indigenous peoples. The outmigration of indigenous youth to seek economic opportunities elsewhere because climate change has limited further their opportunities in their own communities, could lead to erosions of indigenous economies and culture.
• Increase in a number of indigenous persons who end up as environmental refugees or who outmigrate because their lands have gone underwater or have eroded due to landslides.
• Capacities of indigenous women to perform their roles as seed-keepers, water bearers, transmitters of culture and language, among others, are undermined.
• The loss or migration of culturally important species will make it more difficult for elders to practice and pass their traditional ecological knowledge to the next generation. (from the Background page)
  

Indigenous peoples, just as people who have moved into their territory from elsewhere, include very smart and not so smart individuals; people who are well-centered and those who have serious problems. Some are well educated others haven't had that opportunity or inclination. Some contribute to their own problems, some make life better for themselves and for others. In general, their issues are everyone's issues, though the specifics may be different. They tend though, as societies, to have maintained a closer tie to their land and natural environments than have people who live in more human constructed environments. What they know about how their environments are changing is something the rest of us should pay attention to.