This photo essay offers a glimpse of the challenges that climate change presents for indigenous and local communities in northern Europe. An Arctic people of northern Finland whose livelihoods depend largely on their environment, the Skolt Sámi are searching for ways to remain resilient in the face of climate change.

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The land around Rautujärvi Lake, over 400 km above the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian and Russian borders, is home to the Skolt Sámi — reindeer herders and fishermen whose traditional ways are closely intertwined with the northern climate. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

The radiant disk of the Arctic sun hangs in the mid-September sky above northern Finland, like a ritual Sámi drum pinned to the wall inside a lavvu, a traditional Sámi dwelling. The sun’s reflection is floating gently on the still surface of Rautujärvi Lake, located over 400 km above the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian and Russian borders. Come November, according to traditional calendars created and refined over generations by the Sámi people to track seasonal cycles on their land, the sunlight would be bouncing off the ice and snow of Sápmi, as the Sámi call their land.

But the flows of air and water over this landscape are no longer in sync with the ancestral calendars, and the sun’s reflection may continue to float on the water for several weeks longer, disrupting Sámi traditional winter travel, fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding activities.

Like every Skolt Sámi, Vladimir Feodoroff is as much an expert at steering his boat on a lake as he is at lassoing reindeer during a seasonal roundup. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Vladimir Feodoroff is a Skolt Sámi, a very small, but culturally and linguistically distinct group of the Eastern Sámi. The Skolts are considered to be one of the most traditional Sámi reindeer herding and fishermen groups. They still practice the centuries-old customary system of clan-based governance, where the community council sobbar represents the highest body of decision-making, while for over 130,000 Sámi living throughout the northern reaches of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia, the dominant governance system is the Sámi Parliament.

Historically, the traditional lands of the Skolt Sámi, or Sä’mmlaž, spanned a vast territory, from Lake Inari eastward all the way to Kola Bay, the present-day location of the Russian city of Murmansk. Today, most of the Skolts live in a small pocket of the northern Lapland region of Finland, north of Lake Inari. They were relocated here when their homelands were seized by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after World War II.

The relocated Skolts eventually settled in the village of Sevettijärvi, where they continue to maintain their traditional practices and keep the endangered Skolt language alive. Most of the remaining 700 Skolts live around the Finnish municipality of Inari, some on the Norwegian side of the border, and only a few families remain in Russia.

In Finnish Lapland, reindeer no longer roam freely, having to navigate their way throughout the growing network of primary and secondary roads. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Before World War II, the Skolt families would move with their reindeer on foot, or by skis and sleds, depending on the season, along well-worn migration routes from winter pastures to summer fishing grounds across the boreal region of the Kola Peninsula. Once resettled in Finland, they had to nurture meaningful relationships with a less familiar landscape — a transition zone between the treeless fjels and boreal forest.

Here, their movement and reindeer herding practices became constrained by a growing network of roads throughout the region. Following the “snowmobile revolution” of the 1960s, there was also a rapid shift away from more traditional herding practices when families spent most of the year with their reindeer, towards a settled way of life. They came to rely more and more on mechanized transport, such as snowmobiles, small airplanes, and helicopters for gathering dispersed reindeer into herds during corralling season.

Despite these challenges and the dramatic societal shifts brought about by relocation and integration into the European Union’s (EU) economy, reindeer herding has remained at the heart of the Skolt Sámi culture and way of life, including their food, songs, clothes, and art. Adapting to rapid change is nothing new to the Skolts, and they draw on this experience as they search for ways to adapt to their latest challenge — climate change.

At his all-season fishing camp in the upper reaches of the Näätämö River — his second home after his house in Sevettijärvi — Jouko Moshnikoff (right) and his friend Teijo Feodoroff are cutting up reindeer ribs for dinner before firing up the sauna (visible in the background, at the river’s edge). Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

For the Skolts, reindeer meat is an important traditional food that is vital to their culture, helping ensure their food sovereignty in a changing landscape and climate. Skolts, like other Sámi groups, do not waste even a single hair of the slaughtered reindeer. The fine-fibered and lean reindeer meat is used for food and as a source of income; clothes are made from reindeer skins; and the antlers are carved into knife handles, various utensils, ornaments, and souvenirs for tourists.

After Finland became an EU member in 1995, the Skolt Sámi must follow burdensome EU regulations and standards for meat processing if they want to sell reindeer meat on the EU market. To comply with the new regulations, the Finnish Reindeer Herders’ Association replaced the 200 old field slaughterhouses with 10 EU regulations-compliant abattoirs staffed with mangers and veterinarians who oversee the annual processing of 1,500 tons of reindeer meat destined to the EU market.

The Skolts feel that while the market regulations may be good for commerce, they are not good for the local people and their land. The new system has made looking after their reindeer more expensive for the Skolts, forcing them to change when and where they can gather their herds. According to Pauliina Feodoroff — former President of the Sámi Council and Vladimir Feodoroff’s daughter —  the traditional method of killing reindeer inside a corral was pollution-free, but now chemicals must be used daily to disinfect EU-certified abattoirs. Moreover, many traditional practices — such as leaving some spilled blood and rapamaha, or reindeer stomach contents, on the ground to help fertilize and renew the trampled soil inside the corral — are no longer part of the modern system.

The morning sun melts the night frost on bog whortleberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) in the birch forest along the Näätämö River. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Budding birch leaves are an important spring food for reindeer craving a boost of fresh nutrients after a long winter diet of desiccated lichen. In 1966, the colder microclimate in the river valley saved the birch forest from defoliation along the river during an outbreak of the autumnal moth ( Epirrita autumnata), a cold-intolerant forest pest. In the birch forests on the south-facing hills, however, the winter temperature did not dip below -35 °C, thus allowing the moth to survive.

“I remember going fishing with my mother then,” recalls Illep Jefremoff. “And it was like having a heavy snowfall in the middle of the summer. The fish ate up the moths that fell into the water, but the birch trees dried up and died later.”

A few occasional birch stumps is all that remains of the once lush birch forest that used to support a diverse wildlife community. Two new outbreaks of autumnal moth infestation have been reported in Norway since 2005. The Skolt herders are concerned that as the climate warms, the moth outbreaks will become more frequent and spread widely, wiping out remaining birch forests and destroying an important spring food source for reindeer. The annual migration route of an individual reindeer herd is restricted to the territory of one of 56 reindeer cooperatives in Finland, limiting herders’ ability to move their reindeer away from affected areas of forest to find alternative sources of nutrient-rich spring food.

Tero Mustonen paddles across the Ylinen Lake, near his village of Selkie. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Tero Mustonen’s personal quest, under the guidance of Elders, to revitalize land-based traditions of his Finnish ancestors led him to found the Snowchange Cooperative in 2000. The Cooperative works to advance the role of traditional knowledge in environmental policy and practice. Headquartered in the village of Selkie, Finland — where Mustonen is a chief and a traditional seine fishing net master — Snowchange has grown into a respected international community-based network making important contributions towards global recognition of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Mustonen explains that Snowchange’s goal is, “To see our culture come back — complete rebirth on the land!”

Snowchange has made important contributions to the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment,  the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment, and the  Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) due out in 2014. Reflecting on these accomplishments, Mustonen smiles and says, “It is exciting, but a bit of punk rock — in a sense that we [a community-based cooperative] can play with the big boys [international agencies], but we still keep our own unique way.”

In addition to a solid base of over a dozen villages in Finland, Snowchange membership spans the globe, embracing communities, organizations and individuals working on local traditional knowledge-based projects in New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and Australia. All members of the Snowchange Cooperative work on developing locally appropriate, culture-based solutions to the challenges of environmental degradation, development and climate change faced by indigenous peoples and local communities around the world.

Tero Mustonen (left) and his neighbor Pekka Ikonen seine the waters of the Ylinen Lake for muikku or vendace, as European Cisco (Coregenus albula) is called here. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Summer and winter seining for vendace and other fish in the lakes surrounding their community has always been an important subsistence activity for Selkie villagers. But now they worry about the environmental impacts of climate change on their subsistence fishery. Selkie residents have observed seasonal shifts in wind patterns, delays in freeze-up, increase in summer temperatures, earlier spring thaws and changes in the patterns of snow and rainfall. Ice leads — areas of open water that form when lake ice fractures and is kept open by the current — no longer occur in places well-known to local people, making winter travel on the ice a lot more treacherous.

Old residents of Selkie remember that the winter of 1986 was the last real winter when the lakes and rivers were frozen by mid-November. Today, the ice forms only in January when the temperature finally dips below -20°C for several nights in a row. Finland’s hottest daily temperature of 37 °C was recorded in 2010 not far from Selkie. As summers become warmer, the fish seek cooler waters at the bottom of deeper lakes, which makes seining less reliable.

Like generations of Skolts before him, Jouko Moshnikoff welcomes guests at his fishing camp with salted and cold-smoked Atlantic salmon caught nearby. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Fishing for Atlantic salmon ( Salmon salar) has always been an important part of Skolts’ subsistence and cultural heritage, and indeed, they consider themselves to be more fishermen than reindeer herders. Today, in addition to traditional delicacies, Moshnikoff can also offer his guests a few store-bought extras — like apples from Spain and vodka from Estonia — shipped to Finland from other EU countries. During the long winter evenings, after a skin-scalding sauna and a hearty meal, Moshnikoff would crank up a Honda generator from Japan to watch a show or a sports program on his Made-in-China TV.

While these changes add a great deal of convenience and comfort to their lives, Moshnikoff and other Skolt Sámi worry about the consequences and the real costs of such benefits of the global economy for local communities. They recognize that the changing climate is the price they are paying for the fossil fuel-infused food production and transportation system that, while delivering the goods to their homeland, makes their traditional livelihoods, such as the Atlantic salmon fishery on the Näätämö River, increasingly difficult to sustain. Feeling powerless to change the global economic model, the Skolts are nevertheless determined to find a way to sustain their traditional salmon fishery under changing conditions.

On the porch of Jouko Moshnikoff’s cabin — against the backdrop of one of the most significant spawning sites for Atlantic salmon on the Näätämö River — Illep Jefremoff, Vladimir Feodoroff and Tero Mustonen (left to right) examine the area map of the region. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

To describe their work last summer, Feodoroff shows Tero all the traditionally known spawning sites that he visited with Jefremoff as part of the project “Skolt Sámi Survival in the Middle of Rapid Change”. The goal of this collaboration between the Skolt Sámi, the Snowchange Cooperative and the United Nations University (UNU) Traditional Knowledge Initiative is to help the Skolts to develop a climate change adaptation plan. The project is part of the international Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative that is being developed and coordinated by a Peru-based indigenous non-profit organization, ANDES, and supported by UNU.

By applying the IPCCA methodology of community-led self-reflection, evaluation, and future-visioning based on local worldviews and traditional knowledge, the Sevettijärvi Skolts are developing a community-based climate change adaptation plan. Out of this process a collective consensus has emerged that the climate change challenges faced by the reindeer, while significant, are manageable given the present-day nature of reindeer herding. Instead, the Skolt Sámi identified their customary salmon fishery, the other half of their traditional subsistence and cultural identity, as a much greater concern.

As a result, the Snowchange-Skolt partnership has chosen to focus their climate change adaptation efforts on enhancing the resilience of the Skolts’ traditional salmon fishery along the Näätämö River. After visiting all traditionally known spawning sites during the last summer and holding several community-based workshops and discussions, the Skolt-Snowchange partnership is planning on putting together an initial draft of the Atlantic salmon co-management plan for the Näätämö River in 2013, to begin discussions with other salmon users along the watershed, and the representatives of the state fisheries agency, about the future of the Näätämö salmon.

A late-September morning’s  frosty air thickens into fog above the Näätämö River, enveloping birch trees on the riverbank. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

The Näätämö River is one of the few remaining free-flowing waterways in northern Europe that still supports wild populations of Atlantic salmon. The river meanders for 80 km from Lake Inari northward through Finland, until it reaches the Skoltefossen falls at the Norwegian border, 20 km from the Barents Sea. On average, out of eight tonnes of salmon caught annually along the river, only 20 percent comes from Finland the rest is caught in Norway. In addition to the Skolt Sámi and other locals, who are legally allowed to use fishing nets and rods to catch salmon, around 700 tourist anglers also descend on the Näätämö River every summer for the salmon run.

The Skolts feel that the significance of the Atlantic salmon fishery to their traditional culture has not been adequately recognized by the state fishery agencies. The Skolts have never had a real say in how the salmon fishery and the river are managed. The project partners are hopeful, however, that in the coming years their climate change adaptation project will help shift the balance of power and engage state officials and other stakeholders in a more equitable dialogue about the future of the Näätämö salmon fishery.

Over breakfast at Jouko Moshnikoff’s cabin, Tero Mustonen, Illep Jefremoff, and Vladimir Feodoroff (left to right) mull over the next steps in their climate change adaptation project. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

The Skolts realize that there is little they can do about the Norwegian Sydvaranger mine, an open pit iron ore mine that pollutes the fjord connected to the estuary of Näätämö River. Neither can they prevent an increase in risk of disease, breeding difficulties and genetic contamination in wild Atlantic salmon, caused by the farmed salmon escaping from Norwegian fish farms.

Still, based on the project’s first field season, the group is confident that they can do a lot to enhance the resilience of their traditional salmon fishery on the Finnish side of the border. Their main goal is to enhance spawning habitat and improve salmon survival along the Näätämö River. This includes restoring traditional salmon spawning grounds and reducing the predatory species like pike (Esox lucius), burbot (Lota lota) and mink (Neovison vison) that are hunting juvenile salmon or smolt. The group also feels that instead of three nets that the local people are legally permitted to use during the salmon fishing season, no more than a single net or just lures should be permitted for catching salmon. “Getting ten salmon per person in the summer is enough for us, Skolts,” says Feodoroff, “Because we just use it for subsistence, not to sell.”

By putting forward a set of such specific recommendations, the Skolts feel they should be able to develop a dialogue with state fisheries officials about their needs and the value of their traditional knowledge about salmon. The project is also creating pathways for engaging other groups of fishermen who rely on salmon for subsistence, recreation, and tourism on both sides of the Finnish-Norwegian border. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a Näätämö River Atlantic Salmon Co-Management Plan that would create a more equitable governance structure for decision-making, compared to the existing rigid architecture based on trans-boundary bilateral agreements between Finland and Norway. The project partners hope that the envisioned co-management plan would help revamp the current rigid top-down regime through creating an equitable space for participation and contributions of all the groups who want their healthy relationships with the Näätämö River salmon to continue for generations.

In front of his house on the shore of Lake Sevettijärvi, Illep Jefremoff holds the Eastern Sámi Atlas open to the page with a picture of himself and his dog Kepu, checking fishing nets in the winter of 1993. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Jefremoff contributed to the Eastern Sámi Atlas, sharing his knowledge and photographs of Skolt traditional activities, like setting fishing nets under the ice. The Skolts and the Snowchange Cooperative, with the support of UNU and the Nordic Council of Ministers, developed and published the Eastern Sámi Atlas as part of the Skolt climate change adaptation project. This comprehensive tome is a significant land-use document developed by any Sámi group. It shares several centuries of their history, through photographs and maps, describing how the Eastern Sámi, including the Skolt Sámi, lived on their traditional territory.

The real value of the volume, however, is in that it is truly a community effort to make their unseen histories visible. For their work on this project and the publication of the Atlas, the Snowchange Cooperative was honored with the Skolt of the Year Award in 2011, despite being a Finnish organization.

“Snowchange’s work with Sámi is very straightforward — it’s a peace-making plan,” explains Mustonen. Snowchange is trying to address the painful legacy of centuries of encroachment and assimilation by southern Finns on traditional Sámi territories. “All the work that Snowchange is doing with Sámi is about this, be it a nomadic school project or a climate change adaptation work or the Atlas. It is all about reconciliation,” says Mustonen. “If we can maintain a respectable relationship with Sámi and provide them with space and rights they ought to have, we are also healing ourselves,” he concludes.

To the unfamiliar eye, the lakes and forests of northern Finland look as pristine and unchanged as they have been for the last 9,000 years, after the glaciers retreated northward in this part of Europe. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

For the local people, the interdependencies between the sun, water, air, forest, fire, wildlife, fish and people are changing rapidly and in unfamiliar ways. “Who are these new winds?” ask local Elders. ”We do not know them, but we still try to greet them.” The changing climate alters the intricate relationships between the elements of the Skolt traditional territory. The future of the Skolts and their land in this time of climatic upheaval depends on their ability to find ways of maintaining the balance in their relationships with the land and water, forest and tundra, reindeer and salmon. This could be achieved, they feel, only through respectful collaboration with others who have a stake in the future of the region and its biocultural heritage, be they European anglers, Norwegian salmon farmers, or a Finnish NGO.

“It is the time to say goodbye to some things we’ll never see again,” says Mustonen of Snowchange. “But it is also time to build new knowledge. And this knowledge can only emerge through keeping strong connections with the traditional territory. We must be there on the land as it is changing, so that we can change with it.”

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This photo essay is part of Conversations with the Earth (CWE): Indigenous Voices on Climate Change initiative and was published earlier here. To learn more about CWE, visit it on Facebook and Twitter.

Learn more about the Sami from National Geographic magazine.

Fisherman are reporting problems with traditional fish spawning grounds after coral damage by the king tide Manus province, Papua New Guinea. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for Conversations with the Earth (CWE).

The remarkable variety of life’s interdependent phenomena and processes — what we call ‘diversity’ — is being eroded by the modern forces of homogenization. The rich tapestry — woven from a countless multitude of mutually reinforcing strands of biological, cultural and linguistic relationships — is wearing out. Our increasingly fatigued world is losing its vitality, luminosity and splendour under a relentless assault from various “izations”, such as industrialization, colonization, secularization, computerization, globalization, and harmonization, to name a few.

The multiple crises are intensifying and converging. Climate change is hastening ecosystem degradation; peak oil leads to a scramble for other carbon-based fuels and ultimately an even greater carbon footprint; and over-consumption, poverty, species loss, and ecosystem and cultural decline are deepening, further precipitating systemic collapse.

The country knows. If you do the wrong thing to it, the whole country knows. It feels what’s happening to it… Everything is connected somehow… — Lavine Williams, Koyukon Elder, quoted by Richard Nelson.

At the Earth’s 11th Hour, when the environmental and social consequences of human-induced changes have become increasingly apparent, there is growing recognition that the ways of thinking that originated in the dominant, largely linear, reductionist worldview must be abandoned. As Albert Einstein observed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” We must concede that, to date, no amount of technological “tweaking”, guided by the current dominant paradigm, has moved humankind out of its dire predicament. We therefore need to nurture a new way of thinking about the World We Want that is more aligned with the non-linear and interdependent nature of life. Such a paradigm shift is vital if we are to avoid the fate of humankind foretold by Alan Weisman in his non-fiction account of The World Without Us .

Scientists, managers, and policymakers are gradually recognizing the limitations of the current reductionist dualistic covenant, which postulates nature and culture as distinct entities and humans as separate from nature. This view fails to reflect the true essence of our relationship with the Earth and is therefore unhelpful in addressing the ultimate and proximate causes of our planet’s imperiled condition.

Lima Isama Pedro with a pine branch. Mojandita, Ecuador. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for CWE.

Recent years have seen the emergence of a number of integrative fields of inquiry — such as Systems Science, Resilience Science, Ecosystem Health, Ethnoecology, Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory and others. These fields seek to advance our understanding of the complex non-linear and multi-scale interactions between culture and nature, to incorporate insights from both the biological and the social sciences and often to develop respectful and equitable ways of relying on the traditional knowledge systems of land-based communities and the worldviews of indigenous peoples, together with mainstream scientific approaches, to tackle the multiple challenges facing the planet. Local and international organizations involved in biodiversity conservation, wildlife management, cultural preservation and sustainable development have become increasingly engaged in exploring such synergistic approaches and integrating them into decision- and policymaking processes.

Regrettably, the specialization and power hierarchy in the natural and social sciences continue to support an environment of learning and practice that is mired by intellectual siloing and exacerbate the problems we face rather than promote solutions. Still, there is an emerging recognition that as we contemplate and try to transform today’s economic, political and personal realities into a more sustainable, equitable and diverse world, we must rely on the holistic view of human-environment interactions. We have to discover (or re-discover) more synergistic ways of envisioning and interpreting social and ecological systems, as well as the environmental and cultural problems beleaguering them. We must grow wiser, so that the way we experience, interact with and value the Earth and its constituent elements is firmly grounded in an inherently holistic worldview.

A number of integrative fields of inquiry have been emerging in recent years, seeking to advance our understanding of the complex interactions between culture and nature.

One integrative way of looking at the world and our relationship with it is through the lens of biocultural diversity. Terralingua’s Director Dr. Luisa Maffi, one of the pioneers of this synergistic field of inquiry, characterizes biocultural diversity as “the pulsating heart of the globe, the multi-faceted expression of the beauty and potential of life on this planet — a precious gift for everyone to cherish and care for”. Biocultural diversity describes life-sustaining interdependencies and co-evolution of various forms of diversity — a view of the world that has been integral to indigenous ways of knowing — from landscapes to ecosystems, from foodways to languages.

Proponents and practitioners of valuing biocultural diversity — at global, regional and local scales — are working hard to infuse the fields of education, policy, conservation and sustainable development with more holistic models and practical approaches. “It is hard to ignore the similarities between the practical forces driving biological extinctions and cultural homogenization,” contends David Harmon, the President of the George Wright Society. “The only effective way to meet them is with a cohesive, biocultural response.”

Nomadic tribe preparing goat cheese supply before winter time. Zanskar, India. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for CWE.

The preamble to the Earth Charter states that humankind is at a critical juncture in Earth’s history, a time when the future holds both great peril and tremendous promise. As we seek our path toward the just future endowed with diversity and resilience, we must be guided by the vision of the world we would be proud of to leave to our children’s children. Will it be the proverbial Garden of Eden, or Weisman’s World Without Us, or a techno-cyber reality drawn up on a computer screen and engineered in a lab in response to contrived demands and incentives of the temperamental markets? The world we leave to future generations must be the place where the global community of custodians of Earth’s biocultural heritage sows and nurtures the seeds of an abundant and resilient future that is deeply rooted in collective biocultural wisdom and practice. Millennia of co-evolutionary relationships between humans and their surroundings — with people relying on their environment for survival while adapting to and modifying it — gave rise to a tremendous diversity of bioculturally-endowed systems around the globe.

Comprising a mere 4 percent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples care for over 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, directly maintaining close to 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.

Today, many positive examples of biocultural systems endure around the world, as documented in a database maintained by the Resilience Alliance and in the Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook, Dr. Maffi’s latest book on the subject. Many of these examples come from indigenous peoples who continue to maintain biocultural systems worldwide through nurturing an intimate relationship with the planet — known to many of them as Mother Earth — something that our modern societies have all but forgotten. Comprising a mere 4 percent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples continue to care for over 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, directly maintaining close to 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. In this task, they continue to be guided by their collective indigenous knowledge passed on through generations of oral teachings and sustained through practice.

The ‘Los Derechos de la Pachamama’ (Rights of Mother Earth) is an inspiring video created as a joint project between five indigenous communities in Peru with the support of InsightShare and Conversations with the Earth.

The essential feature of biocultural systems that has ensured their persistence in time and space has been their resilience. Prominent resilience scientist Dr. Brian Walker describes resilience as the propensity of a system to learn, adapt, self-organize (through co-evolution between different sub-systems) and absorb change without losing functional integrity. Resilient systems are characterized by a diversity of patterns, functions, and processes — from nutrient cycles to ecological niches, from inter- and intra-specific variability to between and within the richness of languages, from epistemologies to traditional institutions of governance — that ensures a wide range of responses to external or internal challenges.

Resilient systems are characterized by a diversity of patterns, functions, and processes that ensures a wide range of responses to external or internal challenges.

Another important characteristic of a resilient system is its modularity, the presence of relatively autonomous “nodes” (e.g., local communities, ecological refugia, pastoral networks) throughout a system that reduces its over-connectedness and therefore enhances its ability to resist rapid transmission of environmental and social shocks. Tight feedback mechanisms between various elements of biocultural systems enable detection of approaching thresholds, or tipping points (from coral- to algae-dominated systems, from rainforest to savannah, from commons to private property, from subsistence to market-based economy), long before the system is on the verge of flipping into a new, potentially irreversible state.

Functional overlap is a reflection of redundancy in the system that enhances its continuity when some of its elements experience change (e.g., carbon sequestration is achieved in different parts of an ecosystem; traditional diets include varied sources of protein; wildlife harvest is regulated through different institutional arrangements). Substantial social capital — in the form of trusted social networks, wise leadership, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, an equitable integration of different ways of knowing into decision-making —  also allows for diverse systemic responses to change.

Maintaining and enhancing the resilience of biocultural systems is fundamental to sustaining social and ecological systems and achieving the coveted goal of sustainability in meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Such efforts are less about “what”, “when”, or “where”, but more about “how”, because the recognition of the value of biocultural diversity must permeate every aspect of human-environment interactions, policy and decision-making, be it establishment of protected areas, wildlife management, cultural preservation, food production, or poverty alleviation.

The current trajectory of humankind’s “progress” however, is pushing us outside of what the researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Center describe as the planetary boundaries and away from the future that is resilient and endowed with biocultural diversity. The juggernaut of the dominant development paradigm, manifested by the Western multi-planet lifestyle, is sustained through a constant expansion and exploitation of scarce resources, consumerism, privatization of the commons and the homogenization of global cultures. As a result, diversity within and across landscapes and ecosystems is being diminished at local, regional and global scales. Biodiversity is disappearing at unprecedented rates; languages are vanishing; and associated systems of knowledge, wisdom and practice that have regulated human-environmental interactions for generations are also disappearing.

The juggernaut of the dominant development paradigm is sustained through a constant expansion and exploitation of scarce resources, consumerism, privatization of the commons and the homogenization of global cultures.

Globalization further removes us from the natural world, truncating feedback mechanisms and diminishing our ability to comprehend and adequately respond to the immediacy of our predicament, such as, for instance, climate change. Humankind has become a planetary force that is making the world increasingly ecologically, economically, socially and culturally “over-connected”, and therefore more susceptible to swift propagation of adverse conditions through the system, be they economic vulnerabilities, weather extremes, or food scarcity.

Several factors appear to limit our ability to maintain a bioculturally resilient world.

• Wisdom, knowledge, practice and values embedded in local worldviews that have evolved over millennia to recognize the interconnectedness of people and nature, are rapidly eroding amongst land-based communities and indigenous peoples who value Mother Earth and all its beings. Amongst other things, this is often a result of external and internal pressures that instill a false sense of inferiority on such worldviews relative to the dominant one.
• The scientific community lacks conceptual or methodological agreement on how to internalize the interdependent nature of biological and cultural diversities and the common threats to them into research agendas and conservation and management approaches.
• There are too few models, guidelines and tools for the policymaking and management communities that explicitly integrate biocultural diversity and resilience (but see Terralingua’s Index of Linguistic Diversity).
• Human and financial resources are limited for implementing and sustaining biocultural diversity-based initiatives amongst the groups who are interested in integrating them into their strategies and actions.
• There is poor understanding amongst the general public that, in the words of the late Dr. Darrell Posey, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_A._Posey there are “inextricable links between biological and cultural diversity”. Hence, the impact of individual and collective decisions and actions on resilience of biocultural systems are poorly understood.

As documented in Dr. Maffi’s book and a dedicated website, a growing cohort of local and indigenous individuals, communities, non-profit organizations and their international partners is working hard towards overcoming these obstacles by opposing the dominant reductionist paradigm while demonstrating and celebrating the importance of biocultural diversity. Several private foundations (The Christensen Fund, The Seventh Generation Fund, the Swift Foundation), non-profit organizations and initiatives ( Gaia Foundation, the Global Diversity Foundation, Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment, Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas, Land is Life) and multilateral agency programs and partnerships ( Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, The Satoyama Initiative, Satoumi Initiative, UNESCO’s Man & Biosphere Programme, the UN University Traditional Knowledge Initiative and others) have been focusing explicitly on a more holistic way of thinking about achieving sustainability and biodiversity conservation. Many of these groups work on initiatives that are planned and implemented in close partnership with, or are guided directly by, indigenous peoples.

Our best hope for escaping the thickening fog of the dominant economic development paradigm is to focus our limited human and financial resources on maintaining and connecting resilient nodes of biocultural diversity.

Their efforts demonstrate that our best hope for escaping the thickening fog of the dominant economic development paradigm is to focus our limited human and financial resources on maintaining and interlinking resilient nodes of biocultural diversity — whether these are geographically anchored local communities, indigenous nations, or global networks of like-minded individuals on the path to revitalizing and sustaining traditions of biocultural wisdom and practice.

The late Thomas Berry, a renowned cultural historian and ecotheologian, described our age as the dark end of the Cenozoic evolutionary tunnel that the past 65 million years has been. Whether we can emerge from the twilight of self-inflicted crises into the light of an Ecozoic era — when human conduct would be based on valuing the Earth community as an integrated web of mutually synergetic relationships — depends on whether we have the gumption and heart to choose the right path. The current focus on “feel-good” stories in addressing global crises is not helpful for making this choice. However enticing and comforting it is for us to follow the dangling carrot of proclamations that “Changing the world does not have to conflict with living the life you want”, as the authors of World Changing: The Users Guide for the 21st Century argue, such a mindset does not reflect the reality of the changes that we must make.

350.org founder Bill McKibben is quoted as saying that, “It’s not that we have a philosophical difference with the fossil fuel industry — it’s that their business model is destroying the planet.” Business models, however, arise out of a particular way of seeing the world. The currently dominant paradigm of unbridled economic growth and development is firmly rooted in a myopic worldview that is completely ignorant of the interdependence of people and nature and averse to creating or nurturing conditions that support biocultural resilience.

It is therefore imperative that our efforts to deal with the contemporary social and ecological challenges facing the planet are firmly rooted in a holistic worldview, such as biocultural diversity and resilience thinking. In the words of Tom Goldtooth, the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, our global efforts must be about “systems change”, or a paradigm shift, toward learning from such synergistic worldviews as indigenous traditions of relating to the Earth with respect, reciprocity and reverence.

Whether or not humankind is going to achieve such a systems change and succeed in transitioning into the Ecozoic Age depends ultimately on our individual and collective courage to commit to a more holistic worldview that is based on valuing biocultural diversity for our own and our planet’s wellbeing.

For such a transformation to occur, a few key elements must be present. We must embrace change as an inalienable part of life, rather than trying to avert it at any cost. We must be realistic about the scope and scale of what should be done to correct the course, as well as what each of us is capable of doing him or herself. We must also expand our notion of community from a group of people united by their geographic or genetic proximity, to a broader global community inclusive of other like-minded individuals and groups united by their recognition of the value of biocultural diversity as the very “pulsating heart” of Nature. We must work towards a biologically and culturally rich world not only through our work, but more importantly by changing our own thinking and actions. Only through such comprehensive transformation of our own nature could we hope to ensure that Nature is bioculturally resilient for generations to come.

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The earlier version of this blog was published on the United Nations University blog.

NewsWatch blog posts on biocultural diversity could be found here.

The photos and video featured in this article appear courtesy of Conversations with the Earth. You can join the CWE conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

Widespread heatwaves. Spiking temperatures. Uncontrollable wildfires. Unforeseen floods. Oppressive droughts. These kinds of extreme events are becoming the norm and, according to a growing body of scientific literature, are obvious signs of ongoing climate change.

This literature includes the “State of the Climate in 2011” report released by the United States’ National Climatic Data Center. The peer-reviewed report, compiled by 378 scientists from 48 countries around the world, notes that back-to-back La Niñas (the build-up of cool waters in the equatorial eastern Pacific as part of the El Niño Southern Oscillation cycle) in 2011 affected regional climates and influenced many of the world’s significant weather events throughout the year.

These events included historic droughts in East Africa, the southern United States and northern Mexico; an above-average tropical cyclone season in the North Atlantic hurricane basin and a below-average season in the eastern North Pacific; and the wettest two-year period (2010–2011) on record in Australia.

In a recent opinion article published in the Washington Post, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James E. Hansen, wrote: “It is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.”

Rethinking energy policies

The growing awareness of the reality of climate change and its accompanying impacts and risks is causing many to rethink current energy policies and to reconsider the reliance on conventional energy sources that have contributed to creating the global climate crisis. Although many countries are looking toward low-carbon technologies and clean, renewable energy sources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuels are still our primary energy source, as illustrated in BP’s “Statistical Review of World Energy 2012”. To quote from the review:

“Despite high growth rates, renewable energy still represents only a small fraction of today’s global energy consumption. Renewable electricity generation (excluding hydro) is estimated to account for 3.3 percent of global electricity generation. Renewables are, however, starting to play a significant role in the growth of electricity, contributing 8 percent of the growth in global power generation in 2010.”

The definition of renewables includes hydropower, wind and wave power, solar and geothermal energy and combustible renewables and renewable waste (landfill gas, waste incineration, solid biomass and liquid biofuels).

What the West calls ‘Resources,’ we call ‘Relatives’.
— Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation

While this growth in renewable energy represents an important breakthrough, it is crucial to remember that the harvesting of these alternatives, if poorly planned and sited, can have serious environmental and social impacts — particularly on local and indigenous communities. Nevertheless, at the same time, the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources has to be central in our transition to a low carbon society.

Indigenous peoples and energy alternatives

Many indigenous territories have tremendous wind, solar, biomass and geothermal resources, and there are varying opinions as to whether energy-related climate change mitigation activities are having a positive or negative impact on local and indigenous communities. Research suggests that problems can arise when indigenous peoples are not involved or consulted in the development and implementation of energy alternatives.

In Guatemala, for example, Mayan communities have been displaced from their lands by large-scale hydroelectric projects.

“We know this is clean energy,” says Felipe Marcos Gallego of the Ixil Nation, “but when the resources are not distributed equally, or when people don’t receive any benefits from the hydroelectrics… [in] return for the role that indigenous communities play in the forest protection, water protection and in hydroelectrics downstream… it is an abuse and a mockery to the Ixil people’s dignity.”

The situation is similar in Mexico, says Saul Vicente Vasquez of the International Indian Treaty Council. “The problem is that these renewable energy elements are not being shared with the indigenous communities. They are not part of the process and the resources located in their territories are just used with no sharing of benefits.”

In countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia numerous indigenous communities have also been displaced by the expansion of biofuel plantations and villages are fighting to secure sustainable forests and climate-friendly futures.

Interview with Saul Vincent Vasquez.

However, if instituted appropriately, renewable energy projects can enhance and maintain traditional livelihoods and also foster local employment. In North America, for example, the increased demand for renewable energy — in the form of wind, hydro and solar power — is making indigenous lands and territories an important resource for such energy. Replacing fossil fuel-derived energy both reduces greenhouse gas emissions and creates economic opportunities for indigenous peoples.

Energy sovereignty can revitalize communities

The Navajo Nation in the Southwest United States, for example, is conducting feasibility assessments for wind energy generation on tribal lands as a strategy for community revitalization. According to Bob Gough, Secretary of COUP (the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, representing ten tribes located in three states across the northern Great Plains of North America), tribally-owned renewable energy generation can contribute to social and economic development, while at the same time help reduce carbon emissions.

Historically, the tribal experience with increasing energy demands here has been catastrophic: tribes along the Missouri River were flooded by dams constructed to provide hydropower and flood control benefits for downstream communities.

“Tribes never got the dams, what they got were the reservoirs,” says Gough. “Dams that were built for flood control, if you are an Indian, it means you get the reservoir. You’re permanently flooded.”

But the current development of wind power alternatives provides a great sense of local community control over the next round of energy development across the Great Plains, and many of the tribal representatives consider tribal wind power an environmental justice issue. Since 1995, the Rosebud Sioux and other COUP tribes have committed to the utility-scale development of tribal wind resources on their reservations (estimated in the hundreds of gigawatts of potential), and the integration of large-scale distributed tribal wind generation with diminishing reliance on hydropower from federal transmission grids.

The COUP plan encourages tribally-owned development of significant distributed wind generation on Indian reservations as a viable strategy for building sustainable homeland tribal economies. If you live on an Indian reservation you are 10 times more likely not to have electricity in your home than anywhere else in the United States, so wind power allows tribal communities to meet their own energy needs on the reservation, providing a source of pride and self-reliance as well as clean energy. Further, wind energy brings new, sustainable jobs to 20 high-unemployment reservation communities with tens of thousands of tribal members.

There is even a possible revenue stream if power can be sold back to the national grid. In the United States, although native tribal lands cover only 5 percent of the country’s land area, they have the potential to create wind power equivalent to 14 percent of the total energy production in the US.

“[Native communities] recognize the value in that kind of energy sovereignty and energy independence,” explains Gough, speaking at a recent conference on Climate Change Mitigation in Cairns, Australia.

“We are excited about the possibility of ‘Green Collar’ jobs for Indian Country. Renewable energy production is labour-intensive, with jobs created in manufacturing, construction, operation and maintenance. For example, one 240 MW wind farm brings 200 6-month long construction jobs and 40 permanent maintenance and operation positions. Over one-half of Indian Country is under 18 years of age. Why not create good jobs building wind turbines and healthy, affordable and energy efficient homes? A sustainable tribal economy could provide quality jobs and healthy housing for growing reservation populations.”

Interview of Bob Gough.

While the use of wind energy is certainly not new, projects such as this promote a novel pooling of resources among geographically dispersed communities. This creates economies of scale that advance clean energy far more than any one community could do individually. This project provides a model that could be replicated beyond the United States, uniting culturally similar communities scattered over broad landscapes with significant wind and other renewable energy resources.

Sustainable energy pioneers

Although indigenous communities bear the least responsibility for human-induced climate change, they are very active in spearheading renewable energy initiatives in both developing and developed countries as a means of achieving energy self-sufficiency on their lands and territories.

In the Arctic, the Sami have transitioned from using petroleum to using solar light technology in their nomadic reindeer camps. In Indonesia, the Dayak Pasar indigenous peoples developed a project to install clean energy electricity from micro-hydro in an effort to ensure sustainable and community-based development and conservation. And in Mexico, local communities have developed high efficiency wood stoves to reduce their reliance on forest products.

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school is helping rural communities become self-sufficient by teaching rural women and men — many of them illiterate — to become solar engineers. Since 1989, the Barefoot College has been pioneering solar electrification in rural, remote, non-electrified villages. The College demystifies solar technology and decentralizes its application by placing the fabrication, installation, usage, repair and maintenance of sophisticated solar lighting units in the hands of rural, illiterate and semi-literate men and women.

The College trains community members from remote villages to be ‘Barefoot Solar Engineers’ (BSEs) during a six-month course in India. In return, the BSEs agree to install, repair and maintain solar lighting units in their communities for a period of at least five years, and many go on to replicate solar technology in other rural communities.

The Barefoot College has worked extensively with communities in India, Africa and Afghanistan with much success, and the Barefoot approach to training and rural solar electrification has been replicated in Asia and South America. The College focuses particularly on training illiterate middle-aged women, such as those who are widows and single mothers with families, who have their roots in the village and will stay and work there for its development rather than migrate to the city soon after training.

“What’s the best way of communicating in the world today?” asks the founder of Barefoot College, Sanjit “Bunker” Roy. “Television? No. Telegraph? No. Telephone? No. Tell a woman.”

The impact of such work in poor communities cannot be underestimated. Speaking at a TEDGlobal conference in 2011, Roy explains: “We went to Ladakh … and we asked this woman, ‘What was the benefit you had from solar electricity?’ And she thought for a minute and said, ‘It’s the first time I can see my husband’s face in winter’.”

Bunker Roy, TEDGlobal 2011 Talk: Learning from a barefoot movement.

Arctic energy independence

Initiatives like the Barefoot College mean that the cultural potential of renewable energies and energy independence is increasingly being embraced even by the world’s most isolated communities. These new sources of energy not only help to mitigate climate change, but they also help keep remote communities alive by encouraging younger people to stay on their traditional lands.

Elena Antipina and Pyotr Kaurgin from The Northern Forum traveled from the harsh and unforgiving environment of the Arctic Tundra to the Cairns workshop in tropical northern Australia, to share their experiences in bringing solar light technology to the nomadic reindeer herders of the Chukchi Nation in Siberia.

“Children are not going into reindeer herding,” says Antipina. “What has to be done? We all agreed and arrived at one important decision, this being the introduction of solar panels.”

Interview with Elena Antipina

To build and sustain the technical capacity needed for this solar venture, the community collaborated with the Barefoot College and Arctic NGO the Snowchange Cooperative. Tero Mustonen from Snowchange elaborates:

“The engine for this process is two grandmothers, who went from Kolmya to India to be trained as solar engineers. And now, after many twists and turns, the panels are in Kolyma finally and the grandmothers are back… The idea is to solar electrify the nomadic camps and nomadic schools in the region.”

Interview with Tero Mustonen.

The ‘twists and turns’ of this project were many, ranging from health difficulties for the grandmothers acclimating to the high temperatures and altitudes of the Indian training sites, to years of delays in navigating Russian customs requirements to import the solar panels. But the newly trained engineers and partner organizations remained committed to overcoming the obstacles, and the communities continued to prepare by designing special sleds to transport the solar panels and experimenting with wrapping fragile objects in reindeer skins to cushion against vibration when moving. Finally, two years after completion of their training, the panels arrived in the Turvaurgin community.

“You can turn the kettle on, and kids can watch or listen to music, radio, TV… Lately they started to bring notebooks,” says Kaurgin. “The main thing is that our children are with us, because our traditional way of life must be passed on to them, from generation to generation,” he says.

A similar story is told by Chagat Almashev, who lives in the Golden Mountains of Altai, the major mountain range in western Siberia and home to the endangered snow leopard. Almashev shares how the indigenous and local peoples of the Altai Republic have benefited from projects such as supplying herder families with portable solar panels, empowering these families to migrate appropriately (and comfortably), while maintaining their traditional livelihood which is connected to closely observing their lands and seasonal indicators.

On the high alpine Ukok Plateau, another community were trained and constructed a combined solar-wind generator to supply electricity to the training center located at their mountain farming camp, allowing them to train young unemployed people from surrounding camps and villages. “…We are giving opportunity to traditional cultures to lead their traditional style of life,” says Almashev. “Having new technology and sources for energy, and to have access to Internet, even just light in their houses… [this is] stimulating young people to stay on their lands.”

Interview with Chagat Almashev.

A low-carbon future

When introducing renewable energy technologies to indigenous and local communities a balance must be struck between opening these communities to the modern world in a way that offers social and economic benefits, and choosing appropriate technologies that will not create burdensome financial or technical dependencies.

As the framework for the green energy economy emerges, indigenous and local communities are positioning themselves to assert their rights, attract investment and initiate culturally appropriate energy solutions.

Renewable energies are a popular solution as they promote energy autonomy and reduce dependency on fossil fuels brought in from distant locations. Further, they can even offer potential revenue streams, sustainable ‘green collar’ skills development and employment, while also providing power for devices like computers and televisions that are important to retaining younger people in the communities.

If sensitively implemented, clean energy solutions can reduce pollution, biodiversity loss and other adverse environmental impacts experienced by traditional energy solutions, as well as help to avoid the destructive carbon-intensive development path followed by so many developed countries.

Please join in and share your thoughts in the comments area.

Discussion questions

•  What have been your experiences with local communities and climate change mitigation activities — either positive or negative impacts?

•  How can we ensure that carbon-neutral energy sources are more widely adopted, particularly in communities with limited resources and socioeconomic infrastructure in place?

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Further reading

•
Weathering Uncertainty: Traditional Knowledge for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation (2012)

•
Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples: Practices, Lessons Learned and Prospects (2012)

•
Indigenous Peoples, Marginalized Populations and Climate Change: Vulnerability, Adaptation and Traditional Knowledge (2011)

This post was previously published on United Nations University’s Our World 2.0.

The live electronic international conversations of the audiences contributed to the thought cloud as the ecological drama unfolded within us and around us at the University of Virginia OpenGrounds performance space (http://opengrounds.virginia.edu/) on October 29th.

Auksalaq pushes an imperative that is palatable, visceral, and immediate. The gathered participants were stunned, speechless, silent and still for long moments before erupting in applause. The hope, expectation and prayer resonating in many languages translates to say that Auksalaq can be a political and social driver that will accelerate response to climate disruption.

Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner (https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~mburtner/) worked for years to bring together the ideas, artists, technology, music and sounds for Auksalaq, including developing the “nomads” app available on iTunes (http://nomads.music.virginia.edu/) that linked five performance sites worldwide (Virginia, Alaska, Indiana, Montreal and Norway). Auksalaq co-creator and producer, Scott Deal (http://scottdeal.net/main/about/), mixed the audio and video from multiple sites world-wide in real time. While the opera was seen surrounded by screens, cables and computers, the composer and child of the Arctic shore wore an aura of calm and composure, yet radiated a contained enthusiasm that portends great and greater things to come from this young musical genius of interpretation.

Percussionist and UVA faculty member I-Jen Fang led the EcoSono Ensemble (http://ecosono.net/) on her toes with the unbridled enthusiasm of a dancer. At one point on stage center, she plunged her hands into ice water crystal bowls where underwater and above water microphones translated the magic created by her hands that moved through the water like birds. A ghostly, yet sublimely spiritual subaqueous luminosity, that was inspired by Sedna, the Inupiat goddess of the sea, bathed the scene and a multi-dimensional experience unfolded before our eyes and ears.

Auksalaq bears witness to a consequential step in our evolution. Will we and can we, albeit through the busyness of our daily lives, hear the message of Auksalaq and react in ways that nurture hope and optimism that humans on our home planet of earth might redirect our collision course with the climate change abyss.

Through our participation in Auksalaq, we join hands in reexamining the industrial distortion to which we have been subjected for decades and celebrate rebirth of innate awareness of the importance of the ground, sea, sky and sun which we depend upon for life.

Photography by Joe Adkins (http://jwastudio.com/) and videography by Alex Reshikov (http://www.alexreshikov.com).

For indigenous peoples, resilience is rooted in traditional knowledge, as their capacity to adapt to environmental change is based first and foremost on in-depth understanding of the land. As climate change increasingly impacts indigenous landscapes, communities are responding and adapting in unique ways.

In a recent statement to the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) stated:

“…[W]e reiterate the need for recognition of our traditional knowledge, which we have sustainably used and practiced for generations; and the need to integrate such knowledge in global, national and sub-national efforts. This knowledge is our vital contribution to climate change adaptation and mitigation.”

Local resilience depends on local knowledge

The connection to their land is an important source of resilience for indigenous communities, but this resilience depends on an ability to nurture and manage this relationship. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director of Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education), points out that indigenous knowledge is “…locally fine-tuned, which is essential for climate change adaptation and long-term community resilience.”

Speaking at a recent conference in Mexico, her colleague Willy Alangui presented their joint paper outlining the results of three case studies on traditional forest management, as practiced by the indigenous peoples of Loita Maasai (Kenya), Miskitu (Nicaragua), and Dayak Jalai (Indonesia). For the indigenous peoples in each of these case study areas, the forest is not only a source of sustenance and livelihoods, but also the very basis of their identities, cultures, knowledge systems, and social organizations.

These community-based forest management strategies involve setting aside conservation areas, woodcutting, and watershed management zones, which have an important role to play in reversing the process of deforestation, thereby sequestering carbon and promoting rural development.

The multiple land-use systems that underpin these forest management strategies are both a livelihood scheme and a source of resilience.

The Miskito of Nicaragua maintain three land-use types: cultivated fields, pastures, and forest areas; in Indonesian Borneo, a typical Dayak Jalai village territory creates a shifting mosaic land-use pattern including patches of natural forest, managed forests, rotating swidden/fallow, and permanent fields.

The multiple land-use systems that underpin these forest management strategies are both a livelihood scheme and a source of resilience. But a common problem in each of these communities is a lack of political control over their land and forests. For the Loita Maasai, forest resources are held in trust by the Marok County Council on behalf of the Kenyan government. For the Miskitu, access to and use and control of natural resources are impacted by government norms and regulations and external settlers are causing deforestation. The Dayak Jalai are faced with government-promoted expansion of palm plantations and the continued operations of mining companies.

“Undermining local control over these land resources increases the vulnerability of these communities,” say Tauli-Corpuz and Alangui. “Security of land tenure and the resulting ability to access, manage and extract natural resources is a pre-condition for maintaining the resilience of local communities.”

Nyngatom agro-pastoralists: Fragile livelihoods under threat

Sabine Troeger heads the Climate Change Partnership Program at the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network. Her experience with the Nyngatom, a small agro-pastoral group in south-west Ethiopia, suggests that their livelihood systems — although previously well adapted to their fragile environment — are suffering from a potentially fatal interplay between various adverse forces including climate change, which is challenging their entire social system.

Troeger notes that the “finely honed symbiotic relationship between local ecology, domesticated livestock, and the Nyangatom people” has been disrupted. The Nyangatom report that their livelihoods are highly impacted by climate change and changing environmental patterns, namely failing belg rains (Ethiopia’s short and moderate rains from February to May) and increasing temperatures. People perceive this change as irreversible, naming such environmental indicators as disappearing plants and animals, and discuss having to modify their seasonal calendar.

The social capital necessary for community resilience (captured in rules and regulations, ‘ceremonies’ of sharing and reciprocal support) is threatened as elements of social cohesion and identity fade away.

Examples of this degradation include formerly cattle-rich pastoralists becoming poor, women becoming more dependent on their husbands, leather skirts — attributes of clan affiliation and family status — being replaced by cotton, and seasonal ceremonies falling out of sync as a result of changes in the timing of natural indicators.

In adapting to the changes that face them, “…the Nyangatom will not be what they were before,” says Troeger. “They will have to accept the challenge of societal transformation…”

This, she explains,  will  require new institutional settings and the accordant shifts in societal hierarchies and power.

“Rangeland management as well as schooling of the children will make the pastoralists sedentary… Is there any hope for adaptation and a way forward towards enhanced livelihood security?” Troeger asks. Only through a reshaping of society and the adoption of a still-to-be-defined institutional framework, she concludes.

‘People of the Whales’: A story of hope in the face of loss

Chie Sakakibara is a cultural geographer at the University of Oklahoma (Native American Studies Program).  Her current research looks at how vulnerable populations confront the environmental uncertainty of global warming through cultural practices. Her work focuses on traditional relationships with the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) in the Alaskan Arctic, particularly among the indigenous Iñupiaq people who call themselves the ‘People of the Whales.’

The Arctic is experiencing some of the Earth’s most rapid and severe climate change, threatening ties between the Iñupiat and the bowhead on many levels. Temperatures are increasing at a rate twice the global average; Arctic sea ice cover at the end of the melt season has hit record lows, and this downward trend is accelerating. Increased variability in snow and ice conditions is having a profound effect on the distribution and migration patterns of many animals including the bowhead whale.

…contemporary storytelling among the Iñupiat both reveals and helps them cope with an unpredictable future and serves as a way to maintain a connection to a disappearing land. — Chie Sakakibara

Sakakibara talks about how deep the impact of climate change is on Iñupiat society. The difficulties range from lowered whale populations and the consequent increasing reliance on technology, to the need to travel further to maintain a connection to the whales. They also include the loss of Qalgi, sacred ceremonial places that spiritually and physically connect the people to the sea.

However, she also notes the resilience of indigenous peoples to adapt to their changing homeland.

“During my fieldwork, I realized that contemporary storytelling among the Iñupiat both reveals and helps them cope with an unpredictable future and serves as a way to maintain a connection to a disappearing land,” says Sakakibara.  “In order to survive, the Iñupiat have newly endowed their culture with the power to sustain their bond with the whales. This is a story of hope.”

Reindeer herder ‘indigenuity’

On the other side of the Arctic, reindeer herding — a millennia-old tradition of more than 20 different indigenous peoples across the circumpolar North — is also being challenged by climate change. Changing weather and shorter winters are altering reindeer and caribou migration and feeding patterns, while shrubs are moving northward into the barren tundra areas, making access to food a challenge for the animals.

Petr Kaurgin, a Chukchi reindeer herder from the remote Turvaurgin nomadic tribal community in north-eastern Siberia who works with the Snowchange Cooperative, speaks of the impacts of climate change on his community.

“River ice is breaking up earlier and the birds are flying up north about one and half weeks earlier. Earlier, we used to migrate and reach the coast by mid-July. Now, we are missing the coast by 150 km,” says Kaurgin.

Some communities are working to address the changing climate by combining their indigenous knowledge with other information sources to try and predict weather events in order to direct their herds to alternate pastures — for example, by collaborating with NASA and using satellite research systems to complement their own observations.

Mikhail Pogodaev, Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, and Nancy Maynard, senior research scientist from NASA, have called this combination of indigenous knowledge and ingenuity, ‘indigenuity’, and notes that the success of such collaborations relies on co-producing knowledge, equal partnerships and including indigenous peoples in the process from the beginning.

Traditional fire management creates opportunities

In the top northeastern tip of Australia, the Western Arnhem Land Fire Abatement (WALFA) Project uses the traditional fire management practices of the aboriginal traditional land owners in conjunction with modern scientific knowledge to reduce the extent and severity of wildfires in fire-prone tropical savannah. This achieves substantial reduction in annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through increasing strategic early dry season fire management, which decreases destructive late dry season wildfires that produce more potent GHGs, such as methane and nitrous oxide.

Other benefits realized by these skilled indigenous fire managers working on the project include protecting culture and biodiversity ‘on country’ (on their tribal land), and bringing in social and economic benefits to their communities.

Jeremy Russell-Smith, a consultant ecologist to Bushfires NT and the North Australian Indigenous Land & Sea Management Alliance, is one of the project’s leaders. He also emphasizes that the success of the project has resulted from the full engagement and collaboration of all partners.

“If you look at the Western Arnhem Land project, you’d have to say it has been successful in so many ways… Largely because right from the outset it had the full authority of the cultural governance sort of arrangement,” he says. “The senior traditional owners were very supportive of the need to get together and develop a program that would be inclusive and representative of their cultural needs, but knowing that it had to become sustainable in the longer term.”

Local experiences spark new ideas

Across the Pacific Ocean is a research team led by Dr. Bibiana Bilbao of the University Simón Bolivar in Venezuela, which has been investigating the traditional uses of fire by the Pemón people within Canaima National Park, a savannah-forest mosaic landscape.

The research team has found that the Pemón use fire to manage their environment in a diverse and complex way, including the use of fire for shifting agriculture, hunting in forested areas, and the cooperative burning of savannahs to prevent biomass accumulation, and reduce the potential for large catastrophic wildfires. The team has identified the valuable lessons emerging from both the north Australian and southern African experiences to identify future pathways for Latin America.

“It’s impressive how the traditional mechanisms of fire management are identical between Australian aborigines and the Amerindios even though we are so far apart and in two different continents,” says Bilbao.

In light of the large contribution that savannah-burning makes to global emissions (approximately 60% of all carbon emissions from global biomass burning), and the potential for other countries and communities to benefit from the successes of projects like WALFA, the UNU’s Traditional Knowledge Initiative is currently working to bring together a number of parties across the globe to develop carbon offset programmes that will assist them to mitigate climate change and transition to low-carbon growth pathways. Interested parties may contact the TKI directly for further information.

The way forward

As these stories and the accompanying videos illustrate, for indigenous communities around the world, dealing with impacts from climate change is not a prospect for future deliberation. Already, seasonal rains arrive late or fail completely, leading mobile pastoralists to sedentary lives; sea ice platforms break up earlier each year and sacred sites are lost; and familiar homelands and natural phenomena are disrupted. Traditional knowledge and livelihoods must adapt to these changes.

But as they have always done, indigenous and local communities make careful observations about their lands, exchange information and experiences, and plan for the future. New ideas spring up, based on centuries-old knowledge, and partnerships between indigenous peoples and scientists are producing new knowledge to address the challenges of climate change.

In the face of increasing climate instability, recognition of indigenous rights and respectful two-way collaboration is the path forward to build better early warning systems and support local efforts towards building resilience.

Please join in and share your thoughts in the comments area.

Discussion questions

•    What have been your experiences with local communities adapting to climate change?
•    Do you know any examples of respectful two-way collaboration between indigenous communities and scientific research teams?

♦ ♦

Further reading

•    Weathering Uncertainty: Traditional Knowledge for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation (2012)

•    Indigenous Peoples, Marginalized Populations and Climate Change: Vulnerability, Adaptation and Traditional Knowledge (2011)

•     Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples: Practices, Lessons Learned and Prospects (2012)

This post was previously published at United Nations University.

Indeed, member States to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed that Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) initiatives should become an important climate change mitigation mechanism to help in maintaining or reducing the global atmospheric concentration of GHG.

REDD initiatives aim to reduce GHG emissions by assigning forests a monetary value based on their capacity to absorb and store atmospheric carbon. REDD+ initiatives attempt to incorporate additional sources of forest value, such as ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and local livelihoods.

Photo: Nicolas Villaume/CWE from “ Guarani: The Price of Carbon“

Both REDD and REDD+ approaches feed into carbon markets that are supposed to generate significant financial flows from companies with high degrees of GHG emissions in developed countries (e.g., from burning fossil fuels to create electricity) toward less polluting, carbon-neutral or carbon-negative activities in developing countries (e.g., community-managed forestry). The global forest carbon-based market is projected to generate US$30 billion a year.

Amongst other things, carbon markets are expected to provide significant financial rewards for indigenous peoples and communities to continue to preserve their traditional forested lands. Since 2008, over US$7.5 billion has been committed to REDD+ projects, with many more billions promised. The main global REDD+ database currently has 647 registered projects in 40 countries amounting to US$3.32 billion.

Most of these initiatives are located on indigenous lands, since indigenous peoples legally own more than 11 percent of the world’s remaining forests, with traditional ownership and land tenure covering an even greater area, which supports close to 80 percent of the planet’s terrestrial biodiversity.

Some proponents of REDD+ initiatives argue that these projects would help sustain local cultures and communities, while protecting global biodiversity. Others are more cautious, pointing out that such outcomes could be achieved only when collective and individual land rights and indigenous customary laws, as enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), are properly recognized. To date, however, many indigenous communities remain unrecognized by state governments, while the essential elements of UNDRIP (e.g., Free Prior and Informed Consent, or FPIC) are absent from REDD+ initiatives.

Avoided-deforestation projects pose a problem rarely considered: the fate of the forest dwellers themselves. Photo: Nicolas Villaume/CWE from “ Guarani: The Price of Carbon“

Debates about the pros and cons of market-based mitigation measures continue at the local, national and international levels. On the one hand, some indigenous communities see potential local economic benefits of carbon trading projects, especially when traditional low-carbon livelihoods can be supported. Several indigenous communities (e.g., the Paiter-Surui people of Brazil) have been actively participating in setting up initiatives to benefit from carbon trading regimes or payment for ecosystem services (the benefits of nature to households, communities and economies) that compensate them for maintaining or enhancing these natural processes such as water purification, flood mitigation, or carbon sequestration.

However, it has been argued by other indigenous groups that “offsetting” one environmentally damaging practice (very likely to be detrimental to the indigenous peoples or local communities of that particular place) with a seemingly less damaging or even “positive” initiative somewhere else through carbon trading, makes achieving FPIC impossible and goes against indigenous worldviews that are based on respect, reciprocity and reverence toward Mother Earth rather than its monetary value (as articulated in, for example, the Kari-Oca II Declaration).

Many indigenous peoples, therefore, oppose such endeavours, arguing that assigning market value to communally stewarded resources destroys local biological and cultural diversities and undermines the resilience of local social-ecological systems.

The scale of the REDD+ experiment and its aspirational and technological, rather than experiential and community-based nature, have led to considerable problems and delays with its implementation. These challenges cannot be overcome without equitable and respectful participation of indigenous and local communities in all stages of REDD+ activities.

Recently, an Expert Workshop on Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples was organized by the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU-IAS TKI) and IPCC. In March 2012, in Cairns, Australia, indigenous experts and researchers from around the world gathered and highlighted the following issues with REDD+ initiatives:

• National governments, the international community, the private sector and international agencies must recognize the FPIC of indigenous peoples and local communities. This is a prerequisite to ensuring that indigenous peoples and local communities can negotiate the use of their forests and benefit from such initiatives as REDD+.
• The lack of local understanding of the broader goals of REDD+ is a barrier to the implementation of such initiatives. Communication about these topics must be a continuous process that engages the local communities as well as national governments.
• The interaction between domestic legal frameworks for implementing REDD/REDD+ mechanisms and customary land tenure or community land rights is not always clear-cut with regard to ownership of carbon credits.
• The frameworks and bodies governing REDD+ implementation range from multilateral state-centered efforts to bilateral agreements between countries, and voluntary certification schemes. They may intersect with international legal regimes concerning indigenous peoples, biodiversity and cultural heritage and with national, regional and local community and indigenous governance arrangements.
• While many frameworks governing REDD+ contain safeguards and policies to address indigenous and local communities’ rights, there is often little oversight and accountability of these frameworks at the implementation stage.

For REDD+ initiatives to achieve substantial reductions in GHG emissions while doing no harm and, wherever possible, benefiting indigenous peoples, it is crucial to develop and implement legal, social, environmental and accountability safeguards. The approaches being developed to address social safeguards and ensure meaningful and equitable participation of indigenous peoples and communities must integrate indigenous worldviews and be closely monitored throughout all phases of REDD+ project development and implementation.

Recognizing the importance of these issues, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) committed to conducting an assessment of how indigenous peoples’ rights and safeguards are being addressed in REDD/REDD+ projects. The report will be presented at the Forum’s 12th session, in 2013. UNU-IAS TKI has been assisting UNPFII with the preparation of the REDD/REDD+ report (due out in May 2013) to help delegates and indigenous peoples around the world achieve a better understanding of the likely benefits and risks of REDD+ proposals.

***

The earlier version of this blog was published on the United Nations University blog.

For more information and updates regarding the UNU-IAS Traditional Knowledge Initiative please visit their website, Facebook page and Twitter page.

Some photos for this article were provided by Nicolas Villaume/ Conversations With the Earth. You can join the CWE conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

World leaders will meet in Rio de Janeiro June 20-22 to address this at the Rio+20 Conference, 20 years after the very first Earth Summit.

Rio+20 needs to be the moment in human history when the nations of the world come together to find ways to ensure ‘the very survival of humanity,’ environmentalists and scientists have said.

A “Green Economy” will be one of the main ideas under discussion in Rio. The idea is to make a transition to an economic system that maximizes human well-being while operating within the planet’s environmental limits. Exactly how this could be accomplished has yet to be defined.

The current economic system rewards those who exploit and destroy nature, said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director, Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education).

The current system hinders and even blocks Indigenous peoples from practicing their traditional ways of living that actually represent “a real green economy” that can be sustainable, achieve well being and are climate-friendly, said Tauli-Corpuz, a member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines.

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director, Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education and member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines. Photo: IISD

Tauli-Corpuza spoke to me at a special workshop run by United Nations University (UNU) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month in Cairns, Australia. That workshop was about how traditional knowledge and practices could help in reducing carbon emissions that are overheating the planet.

Unless countries are going to eliminate GDP (gross domestic product) and economic growth and begin to work holistically then they will not be solving anything, she said.

In the first State of the Planet Declaration, experts at Planet Under Pressure agree the current short-term growth policies must end or humanity risks pushing past irreversible tipping points.

“However, what they will be talking at Rio+20 is more economic growth with a flavour of green,” said Tauli-Corpuza.

So why is she and many other Indigenous people going to Rio+20?

“It’s a venue to present our views and to share knowledge,” she said.

In fact, indigenous peoples will host their own conference in Rio days before the formal Rio+20 Summit. Throughout the Summit they will run the Indigenous Peoples’ Pavilion to showcase their experiences on how to live sustainably.

“We are collecting information from communities and looking at the common threads of traditional knowledge that work,” said Tauli-Corpuza.

When talking to people from women’s groups, labor organizations, and many non-governmental organizations, we are all seeking the same things, she said.

Respecting human rights, and the legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples tops the list of what’s needed.

“The United Nations needs to call on the nations of the world to recognize and respect the rights of indigenous peoples,” said Johannes Bauer, an independent scientist and co-founder of the REDD+ Australia Cooperative Working Group, a non-governmental organization involved in protecting forests in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

“The key is for indigenous peoples to manage their own affairs. Governments are often the biggest unwitting obstacle,” said Bauer at the UNU/IPCC workshop.

For Bauer and every indigenous representative at the workshop, the overaching issue is the right to their land and cultural practices. Indigenous peoples are among the most affected by climate change, as well as by industries like mining, oil, coal, and agribusiness that appropriate or use their lands without consent.

Many are suspicious the proposed shiny new green economy is the old, land-hungry wolf in green clothing.

“The values of the growth economy are at odds with indigenous values,” said Fiu Elisara, Executive Director of Ole Siosiomaga Society (OLSSI) in Samoa.

Traditional values include local self-sufficiency, social cohesion, cooperation and respect for all living and non-living things. Among Latin American indigenous communities this is known as Buen Vivir (“good living” in Spanish), or Sumak Kawsay in the language of Andes mountain peoples.

Those are the values for low-carbon living and yet governments often prevent local people from living and managing their lands in locally appropriate ways, said Elisara.

Last August many indigenous leaders called for an international moratorium on the activities of extractive industries (mining, oil, gas etc) operating without consent of local people. They will raise this issue again at Rio+20 and said that the current economic and development model has been a disaster and that a truly green economy understands “that humans are an integral part of the natural world” and respects the rights of human beings.

“We believe that our worldviews….are crucial in bringing about a more just, equitable and sustainable world,” they concluded in a public statement called the Manaus Declaration.

Gwendolyn Smith, Amazon Conservation Team. Photo: Stephen Leahy

Climate change is the result of not behaving in the right way, according to the isolated Trio, an indigenous people living in Suriname’s Amazon forest near its border with Brazil.

“They see climate change as big problem. They say their forests are changing, deteriorating,” said Gwendolyn Smith, a project director for the non-profit organization Amazon Conservation Team (ACT).

ACT was launched by U.S. ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and Costa Rican conservationist Liliana Madrigain Madrigal in 1996 to work with indigenous peoples in the rainforests of Suriname and elsewhere in the Amazon to retain their traditional knowledge.

The Trio (also known as Tiriyó) number perhaps 2000 and live entirely off their forests as hunters and swidden farmers. Swidden is a form of slash and burn agriculture where small plots are cleared and crops planted for one or two seasons, after which plots in new areas are cleared. Old plots are left fallow for many years, allowing the forest and soils to replinish. On a small scale this is sustainable.

“They have strict rules for managing their forest,” said Smith, who has worked with the Trio for seven years and is also a PhD student at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

Their knowledge of the forest is unparalleled but the Trio know little about the wider world. “Money was only introduced to them six years ago and they don’t really understand concepts like saving,” she said.

Similarly, the concept of carbon and using their forests to soak up carbon is simply not part of their worldview, she told delegates at The Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples workshop in Cairns, Australia.

And yet there are international efforts and millions of dollars available to Suriname to use its forests to soak up some of the billions of tonnes of carbon emitted each year from burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Their lands and those of other forest peoples may one day end up on some carbon market.

“The Trio know everything about the forest but have no understanding of Western science or Western ways of thinking,” said Smith.

By contrast, some Karen communities in the mountain forests of northern Thailand eagerly embraced Western science to get hard data needed to keep local governments from banning their traditional practices of swidden agriculture.

“Our government is pushing sedentary, intensive farming,” said Chaiprasert Phokha, Village Headman, Huay Hin Lad Nai Community.

Chaiprasert Phokha, Huay Hin Lad Nai Karen Community, Thailand. Photo: Citt Williams, OurWorld2.0

Swidden or shifting cultivation is commonly thought to be primitive and destructive when it is in fact a highly productive form of ecological farming. Intensive agriculture as practised in much of the world is a leading source of carbon emissions.

“Research shows that our form of shifting cultivation is good for the climate and biodiversity and helps us be self-suffecient,” said Phokha through a translator at the climate workshop.

The community plants 60 to 100 different crops in forest plots that have been burned to clear them. Fire and forest management are crucial and the burning only lasts for a couple of hours, he said.

However, in an effort to reduce air pollution the local provincial governor banned all burning. But other regions where Karen farmers practice swidden agriculture have no air pollution problems, said Phokha.

Karen communities were doing their own research and invited scientists to do a ‘carbon count.’ Researchers at Indigenous Knowledge and Peoples Foundation found that their swidden practices soak up nearly 750,000 tonnes of carbon over an area of about 3000 hectares. Burning only releases 400 to 500 tonnes.

The fire ban was lifted and now government experts in Thailand are flocking to Phokha’s community to learn more.

“Our communities have become a learning site for government officials,” he said with a smile of satisfaction.

Youba Sokona of Mali is co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III. Photo: Citt Williams, OurWorld2.0

Many indigenous peoples are living examples of societies thriving with sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles. Successfully meeting the global climate change challenge requires that much of the world shift from high carbon-living to low.

This shift is daunting. Current emissions for Australia and the United States average about 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person. In the coming decades that needs to fall to two tonnes per person as it is currently in Brazil or the Dominican Republic.

Emissions from most indigenous peoples are even lower and are amongst the lowest in the world.

All options for making the shift from high- to low-carbon living need to be explored and that’s why the United Nations University Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU) and  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) invited indigenous peoples to a special three-day workshop in Cairns, Australia last week.

“Climate change is the result of our behaviour,” said Youba Sokona, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III that will report to governments in 2014 on ways carbon emissions can be reduced.

The IPCC is the world authority on climate, assessing the state of knowledge on the issue every five to six years. Traditional knowledge of local and indigenous peoples have been left out until now.

“One of the critical solutions is to change our behavior, to change our production and consumption systems,” said Sokona, a climate expert from the African nation of Mali.

The Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous peoples workshop offered a number of “examples of local peoples in Siberia, in Australia, northern Canada and in some African countries demonstrating that it is possible to change our behavior,” he said.

Marilyn Wallace, a Kuku Nyungkal Aboriginal woman. Photo: Citt Williams, OneWorld 2.0

“I live in a shack but I love being on my ‘bubu’, my traditional land,” said Marilyn Wallace of the Kuku Nyungka ‘mob’ (tribe) in northern Queensland, Australia.

Wallace has lived in towns but fought for years to “return to country” and live in her tropical forest homeland 60 kilometers from Cooktown.

At the workshop Wallace and every other indigenous delegate focused on land rights. The simple truth is that if they can’t live on and manage their lands with time-tested traditional methods, they can’t be part of the solution to climate change.

“It is clear that rights, equity and ownership of land are crucial issues for indigenous peoples,” agreed Sokona.

While Sokona thought the workshop went well he was surprised at the laser-like focus on land rights issues.

“The IPCC has to talk about rights and culture. You cannot separate it from climate change,” said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director, Tebtebba(Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education).

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director, Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education and member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines. Photo: IISD

“The IPCC has been issuing major reports for 20 years now and things have only gotten worse. What does that say? It says it is not changing the way people behave or the systems that reinforce this,” said Tauli-Corpuz, a member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines.

Dealing with climate change means changing the current economic system that was created to dominate and extract resources from nature, she said.

“Modern education and knowledge is mainly about how to better dominate nature. It is never about how to live harmoniously with nature.”

“Living well is all about keeping good relations with Mother Earth and not living by domination or extraction.”

That kind of talk confused some participants looking for case studies, techniques and data on how to reduce carbon emissions. In the hallways one scientist complained that indigenous presentations lacked hard data and therefore nothing could be done with what they were presenting.

Even the physical workshop set up demonstrated the difference in worldviews. Held in the meeting rooms of a very nice Hilton Hotel, the speakers sat on a raised dais, looking down on participants sitting in rows classroom style. For many this echoed school systems that suppressed and continue to suppress traditional knowledge. When indigenous people discuss things everyone sits or stands in a circle. And people talk, especially elders, until they have said what they wish to convey no matter the time or schedule.

“The workshop was not structured to reflect the indigenous peoples’ way of sharing their knowledge,” said Tero Mustonen, Head of the Village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland.

“If this is supposed to be an intercultural change, it did not work very well,” said Mustonen, who has a doctorate and has written scientific papers.

The IPCC’s structure is rigid, with an emphasis on technical information, he said. “Indigenous peoples’ worldview and traditional knowledge can’t be conveyed by numbers and charts.”

However, if the oral history of traditional people can be recognized as valid as science that would be a major breakthrough, said Mustonen.

“No one has all the answers,” said Jean Pierre Laurent, Ethnobotanist at TRAMIL (Traditional Medicines of the Islands) in the Caribbean nation of St Lucia.

Translating traditional knowledge into academic language is possible. “My role in St Lucia has been to bridge science and traditional knowledge,” said Laurent, who was raised on a farm there.

This UNU-sponsored workshop sends an important message to indigenous people to hold on to their traditional knowledge, he said.

And one indigenous person has a climate change message for those who are most responsible.

“Are the Europeans (industrialized nations) delivering climate mitigation from their heart? Are they ready to do that?” Wallace, an Aboriginal woman, asked.

“It was a hard journey for us to get back on our land. Now we say: “come and learn from us.”

Petr Kaurgin, a Chukchi reindeer herder from Siberia. Photo: Citt Williams

“Our elders are the best source of information. Better than science or the internet,” said Petr Kaurgin, a Chukchi reindeer herder from the remote Turvaurgin nomadic tribal community in north-eastern Siberia.

Kaurgin delivered his message to climate scientists from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other Indigenous peoples at the closing of the Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous peoples workshop here in Cairns, Australia.

“We need to listen to the wisdom of the elders. We can use everything in nature. But we must not break or destroy things, ” he said through a translator.

It was -45C when Kaurgin left his home to bring his people’s message to climate experts here in the hot, wet tropical part of Australia. The IPCC is the world authority on the science of climate change. And along with the United Nations University (UNU) organized the workshop to figure out how to incorporate Indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge.

“When we love the land where we live only then we are happy,” he said.

Kaurgin’s people and other local Siberian communities have been experiencing the impacts of climate change such as melting permafrost for the last 20 years said Tero Mustonen, Head of the Village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland.

Tero Mustonen, head of the village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland. Photo by Citt Wiillams

As the hard permafrost melts it produces landslides and collapsing riverbanks, altering the entire landscape. That affects traditional reindeer migration routes, and alters where the animals can feed and travel. Seasons are shifting and river and lake ice is thawing sooner, making life less predictable, said Mustonen, who has a doctorate and is head of international affairs for the Snowchange Cooperative, a network of Indigenous peoples.

Kaurgin and his family manage a herd of 15,000 reindeer, but they can no longer migrate to the rich grasses on the Arctic coast in summer because the ground is now too soft. “They have to stay 80 to 150 kilometers inland,” said Mustonen.

The Chukchi and other Indigenous peoples living traditional lives put very little climate-altering carbon into the atmosphere. Helping them stay on the land means they can continue their low-emission ways of living. If they leave their land and go into towns and cities their emissions will inevitably increase.

The IPCC needs to integrate traditional knowledge into its scientific assessments as was done for the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Traditional people were also able to improve the content of that report,  said Mustonen.

“If traditional knowledge is preserved they will survive climate change. After all the Chukchi have words for mammoth. They have oral knowledge of how to hunt and cook mammoths,” he said.

“They’ve experienced major changes before. ”

Chukchi reindeer herd. Photo: Saija Lehtonen

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