Since they are on the frontlines of climate change, indigenous communities, their traditional knowledge, their social, cultural, human rights as well as related biological diversity are particularly at risk. Indigenous peoples, who are often among the world’s most marginalized and impoverished peoples, are bearing the brunt of the catastrophe of climate change and, as such, provide a human face to the climate change crises.

The most advanced scientific research has concluded that climate change poses a direct threat to the livelihoods of many indigenous groups due to their traditional and continuing reliance upon resources harvested from their immediate environments. Such conclusions require urgent and unprecedented efforts and interventions. Issues involving indigenous peoples, therefore, deserve specific attention when considering this global threat.

Many indigenous territories are located in regions where impacts of global warming were anticipated and are already proving to be both early and severe. Such vulnerable environments include lowlying islands, the circumpolar Arctic, high altitude zones, low-lying lands and river deltas, semi-humid and arid lands, and especially pastoralists and semi-nomadic peoples.

For the same reasons that they are highly vulnerable to climate change, indigenous peoples may also be particularly well placed to observe environmental changes caused by this phenomenon. Awareness and attentiveness to the fluctuations and alterations in their natural surroundings are an integral part of their ways of life, and remain of crucial cultural importance even in areas where lifestyles have been modified by colonialism and globalization. Knowledge of specific localities may stretch back over many generations. When shared amongst elders and youth, this knowledge provides the basis for important comparisons between what is observed today and what occurred in the past. Indigenous knowledge thus offers valuable insights into local changes in ecological processes. This knowledge can consequently supplement and add much needed detail and nuance to the broadscale view offered by scientific research.

First, however, it is important to define "indigenous knowledge". The term has come to be recognized as local knowledge that is unique to a given culture and represents the dynamic contributions of any community to problem solving, based on their own perceptions and conceptions, and the ways that they identified, categorized and classified phenomena important to them. It is the information base for a society which facilitates communication and decision-making. These indigenous information systems are dynamic and are continually influenced by internal creativity and experimentation as well as by contact with external systems. Values once believed to be fundamental for guiding the way particular people deal with each other and their environment often turn out to be situational and time linked. People living within the same community seem to espouse a range of beliefs, use a host of terms, that do not always overlap. Yet, when local knowledge is taken into consideration in situations unique to specific territories, benefits can be abundant. The following two examples from Latin America illustrate this point.

The modernization of peasant agriculture in El Palmar, Columbia, for example, was fraught with environmental and economic problems (Reinhardt, 1994). In this situation, the El Pamar community in the southwestern Andes of Columbia survived through subsistence farming and small-scale market agriculture. This community was introduced to new farming methods for nontraditional crops to be sold in urban markets. However, the reliance on three modern crops (coffee, tomatoes, and green peppers) and modern farming techniques led to soil erosion, economic instability, and crop health risks. Farmers, noting this risk, employed their own monitoring system and returned to growing more traditional crops.

It is also important to keep in mind that indigenous groups and their local communities have always been confronted with changing environments. Therefore, they are not simply passive victims of climate change but valuable partners in the global efforts to address the issue. They are already using their traditional knowledge to deal with and adapt to climate change at the local level. Their strategies for coping with these changes have allowed them to successfully negotiate historical shifts in climate and environment by modifying existing practices, shifting their resource bases and/or restructuring their relationships with the environment. While the environmental transformations engendered by climate change are expected to be unprecedented, indigenous peoples have a great deal to contribute in designing and implementing solutions to climate change. Because adaptation and mitigation measures could very well be enhanced by traditional knowledge, it is important to proceed with the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples’ representatives and organizations and build on their existing expertise and achievements in relation to environmental stewardship, international climate change negotiations and the protection of traditional property and intellectual rights, all of which would facilitate effective collaboration in the pursuit of mutual goals.

Many indigenous groups have already implemented new measures in order to deal with the rapidly changing regions in which they live. For example, the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, an organization composed of federally recognized Indian tribes in the northern Great Plains of the United States, has been among those organizations supporting the growth of wind powered electric generation that has been developing among a number of Great Plains Tribes over the last few years. The Hopi Nation is going ahead with both wind and photovoltaic electric power generation. Some Native American tribes have been working to capture methane (a potent greenhouse gas, if allowed to escape into the air) from landfills, to use as fuel. Other U.S. tribes are taking advantage of carbon credits, and planting of trees which absorb carbon dioxide, to offset the production of the greenhouse gas in power production and industry.

Other countries are also developing sources and methods of renewable energy. The Wayuu people of the Guajira region of Colombia's northeast Atlantic coast established the Jepirachi Wind Power Project which is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 1,168,000 tons over a 21-year operational period and will be a major factor in tribal development. In Bangladesh, villagers are creating floating vegetable gardens to protect their livelihoods from flooding. In Vietnam and on some Pacific islands, communities are helping to plant dense mangroves along the coast to diffuse tropical-storm waves. In Central and South America and the Caribbean, many people have shifted their agricultural activities and settlements to new locations, less susceptible to adverse climate conditions. This includes indigenous peoples in Guyana who move from their savannah homes to forest areas during droughts, and plant their main staple, cassava, on moist floodplains which are normally too wet for other crops. During the 1995 drought, following traditional practices in such times, indigenous peoples in the Amazon region switched from their dependence on agriculture to reliance on fish. In the Arctic, aboriginal people have shifted to hunting alternative species whenever species such as geese and caribou changed their migration times and routes. They have also adjusted to hunting marine species in open water, later in the year, under different sea and ice conditions. Other changes have included the freezing of foods where the traditional technique of sun-drying has been impossible due to unseasonably wet weather, or drying the food indoors.

Numerous native people have been applying new technologies to meet the new conditions. For example, in El Salvador and Guatemala, deforestation has made it too time-consuming for women to gather wood which is the primary source of fuel. Therefore, the use of clean, renewable energy, such as solar ovens, has been promoted among groups of women in their own neighborhoods, where they can learn how to use the devices from one another. The clean energy, replacing wood, further reduces global warming, while also ending exposure to toxic smoke.

A number of indigenous nations are undertaking research on how best to act in the face of climate change. One such example is EALAT, the Reindeer Herders’ Vulnerability Network of Indigenous People in Norway, that in collaboration with the Association of World Reindeer Herders, is undertaking a study to determine how this ancient herding lifestyle will adapt to climatic changes, and to propose policies to government and the private sector which will increase the viability of reindeer herding in the face of climate change. Also in the Far North, the Arctic Council is a high-level forum for cooperation, coordination and interaction between Arctic states, indigenous communities and other Arctic residents, focusing on some of the key challenges facing the Arctic region, particularly the need for integrated resource.

Thanks to the revitalization of indigenous cultures, specifically the Dolgans, Evens, Evenks, Ukagirs and Chukchis, in the northern regions of the Russian Federation, with UNESCO support, a system of nomadic schools which follow the reindeers’ migrations routes is being employed, making education accessible for the herders’ children. These nomadic schools which are often run by members of the herder community, educate children in their local communities and natural surroundings, far from population centres, allowing the groups to continue following the reindeer undisturbed. In this particular case and region, the nomadic school is a vital institution for indigenous people who lead a nomadic way of life because it provides education while adapting traditional culture to the 21st century.

In April, 2008, indigenous peoples from eleven Latin American countries and native observers from Indonesia and Congo met in Manaus, Brazil, to form the International Alliance of Forest Peoples, with the objective of giving indigenous nations a voice in international climate change discussions, focusing specifically on issues of deforestation. To ensure that remaining forests are left intact, the alliance proposed that carbon credits be purchased by developing countries and that the payments go directly to local indigenous communities instead of to the governments of the countries in which they located.

During 2004, many interviews conducted in Nunavut indicated that unpredictability and change define the very nature of the Arctic environment, historically facilitated by extensive knowledge of local environments and related skills sets, flexibility of harvesting strategies, mobility and flexibility of group size, and strong social networks: characteristics of Inuit society that have enabled this group to live and thrive in the Arctic for millennia. Traditional Inuit clothing and dwellings, for instance, relying solely on materials at hand, stand as unsurpassed adaptations to the Arctic climate. Despite unpredictability and change being the norm, interviewees indicated that recent climatic changes are unusual and in many cases without precedent. More unpredictable weather, more storms, stronger winds, thinner ice, later ice freeze-up and earlier break-up, were among changes indicated. These conditions have made subsistence activities more dangerous, have limited the access to hunting grounds, and caused anxiety among community members. Coping strategies involve risk minimization, risk avoidance, modification of the timing and location of harvesting activities, and modification of the equipment used to harvest. They are largely behavioral in nature and have been autonomously undertaken by individuals in response to changes that are being experienced and in anticipation of future change. Flexibility in harvesting strategies allows hunters to switch hunting locations or the species hunted if a certain area is inaccessible. Social networks provide mechanisms for the rapid and effective community dissemination of information on dangerous conditions and the pooling of risk. The sharing of equipment such as GPS, radios, and other safety equipment, for instance, is widespread and allows for relatively safe travel on the land in the context of changing climatic conditions.

Changes in the physical environment are being managed in conjunction with opportunities and challenges posed by social, cultural, and economic changes, and in many cases, new opportunities have emerged. VHF radios enable safer travel; if difficulties are encountered, help can easily be summoned. GPS allows navigation in the harshest of conditions. Tents can easily be carried and offer alternatives to building igloos if conditions do not permit. Support from the Nunavut Land Claim Institutions facilitates the purchase of this equipment. The diversification of food production away from a total reliance on country food has reduced vulnerability to changes in resource availability and accessibility.

Overall, however, the social and cultural implications of the transition of a traditional Inuit lifestyle to an increasingly ‘southern’ wage-based lifestyle have undermined resilience. Mobility and flexibility in group size are no longer adaptive options due to the settlement of Inuit in fixed communities since the 1960s. Among younger generations there has been an erosion of local knowledge and skills necessary for safe and successful harvesting. The adoption of new technology and equipment has resulted in dependency; if the GPS fails and people do not know how to navigate the traditional way, they encounter life-threatening difficulties. Moreover, the dependence on such equipment for harvesting has increased the importance of monetary resources. The social networks that facilitate sharing have been weakened and the communal allocation of resources and pooling of risk have also been undermined.

Therefore, it is imperative to remember that what may work in one region of the world may not apply to all others because each is unique in its conditions physically, socially and culturally. Solutions that work well in certain areas can cause harm and create more damage in others. It is crucial that each set of circumstances and parameters be assessed on its own merit and applied cautiously and judiciously. Additionally, it is essential to continually monitor conditions and to make pragmatic changes and adjustments as situations shift and as new information becomes available.
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