The Resilience of Indigenous Australians to Climate Change

• Introduction
• The Resilience of Indigenous Australians to Climate Change
• Global Cities Institute - RMIT University, Australia invites your response

Introduction

Donna Green, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia, writes,

“My experience in working with Indigenous communities across northern Australia has demonstrated the importance of giving people reliable information on climate change, as well as paying them the respect of asking their views on how best to adapt to those likely changes. Once empowered with that information, Indigenous people have responded strongly and are keen to act. But the lack of government and private funding to assist them in doing so remains a major obstacle.”

The views expressed in this essay/article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Global Cities Institute. Readers should note that Global Cities Institute seeks a diversity of views and opinions on contentious topics in order to identify common ground.

The Resilience of Indigenous Australians to Climate Change

By Donna Green

From the stone country of the Kimberley, to the sandstone escarpments of Arnhem land, the rainforests of the Daintree and the sandy palm fringed islands of the Torres Strait, archaeological records show Aborigines and Islanders have effectively adapted to environmental change for thousands of years. Given Indigenous Australians’ past ability to respond to environmental change, it is reasonable to assume that they would be among the best placed Australians to cope with environmental impacts caused by anthropogenic climate change. In fact the opposite is true, for two key reasons.

The first reason relates to the rate of environmental change. Projections of anthropogenic climate change indicate appreciable direct biophysical impacts occurring over decades. In contrast, prior environmental change occurred over millennia. The second factor relates to social and cultural resilience. Many of these communities are fighting a number of devastating social problems, the result of decades of profound government mismanagement and neglect.

In mid 2006, newspapers began to report on the plight of several low-lying Torres Strait Islands. Shortly after, the threat was officially acknowledged by the Australian government, which signed off on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report. For the first time, this report acknowledged the likelihood that around half of the 4,000 people living on the Islands would have to relocate in the long-term. Understandably, the Islanders see relocation as a last resort, and are already working on adaptation strategies to delay, and ideally avoid, having to leave their ancestral homelands.

How could action be taken to reduce this threat and promote resilience to climate impacts in these communities? I decided to see whether the traditional environmental knowledge passed down through oral history could guide region-specific and culturally appropriate climate adaptation strategies. After organising meetings with Traditional Owners from across northern Australian, a collective decision was made to begin this work in the Torres Strait.

Torres Strait Islanders are a traditional seafaring people, who pride themselves on their intimate understanding of the seasonal shifts in the ocean and weather. Islanders had noticed that in recent years the waves occurring in these king tides seemed higher and more powerful. Consequently, on several of the islands, coastal tracks were being washed away and long-established graveyards and houses inundated. In addition to the psychological distress caused by the flooding, their remoteness makes repairing this damage extremely expensive.

The Islanders understand that the problem extends further than the initial flooding. They are concerned about indirect impacts of climate change, seeing how, for example, inundations could jeopardise public health caused by contamination of fresh water supplies or from the flooding of their landfill rubbish tips. While a full suite of indirect impacts are harder to assess and quantify, they are crucial to consider in designing comprehensive adaptation strategies.

Many of these local adaptation strategies are being detailed on the new Sharing Knowledge website. The Sharing Knowledge project breaks new ground in Australia by being a source of both regional climate projections for northern Australia and local Indigenous observations of environment changes. Combining traditional knowledge with western science will assist in the creation of strategies for adapting to climate change that are culturally and geographically relevant, and therefore far more likely to be of practical use to the communities of northern Australia. As well as providing that information online, the project also strives to communicate locally relevant climate impact assessments to people who otherwise have limited access to accurate information through community outreach work.

Recent examples of this outreach work include talks with elders in the Torres Strait and workshops for schoolchildren in the Kimberley on the latest science on climate impacts for their regions, and how traditional knowledge could help in responding to those risks. Further workshops are planned across northern Australia. However, the remote locations of these communities and limited funding means that this crucial work of working directly with communities remains highly constrained.

My experience in working with Indigenous communities across northern Australia has demonstrated the importance of giving people reliable information on climate change, as well as paying them the respect of asking their views on how best to adapt to those likely changes. Once empowered with that information, Indigenous people have responded strongly and are keen to act. But the lack of government and private funding to assist them in doing so remains a major obstacle.

Global Cities Institute - RMIT University, Australia invites your response

AdaptNet invites your responses to this article. Please send responses to the editor AdaptNet, Saleem Janjua: adaptnet@rmit.edu.au

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For further information, please contact the editor, Saleem Janjua.