People And Climate Change

With a long history and deep connection to the Earth’s resources, indigenous peoples have an intimate understanding and ability to observe the impacts linked to climate change. Traditional ecological knowledge and tribal experience play a key role in developing future scientific solutions for adaptation to the impacts. The book explores climate-related issues for indigenous communities in the United States, including loss of traditional knowledge, forests and ecosystems, food security and traditional foods, as well as water, Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost thaw and relocation. The book also highlights how tribal communities and programs are responding to the changing environments. Fifty authors from tribal communities, academia, government agencies and NGOs contributed to the book. Previously published in Climatic Change, Volume 120, Issue 3, 2013.

Climate change is a profoundly social and political challenge that threatens the well-being, livelihood, and survival of people in communities worldwide. Too often, those who have contributed least to climate change are the most likely to suffer from its negative consequences and are often excluded from the policy discussions and decisions that affect their lives. People and Climate Change pays particular attention to the social dimensions of climate change. It closely examines people's lived experience, climate-related injustice and inequity, why some groups are more vulnerable than others, and what can be done about it--especially through greater community inclusion in policy change. The book offers a diverse range of rich, community-based examples from across the "Global North" and "Global South" (e.g., sacrificial flood zones in urban Argentina, forced relocation of United Houma tribal members in the United States, gendered water insecurities in Bangladesh and Australia) while posing social and political questions about climate change (e.g., what can be done about the unequal consequences of climate change by questioning and transforming social institutions and arrangements?). It serves as an essential resource for practitioners, policymakers, and undergraduate-/graduate-level educators of courses in environmental studies, social work, urban studies, planning, geography, sociology, and other disciplines that address matters of climate and environmental change.

'Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples offers the most comprehensive resource for advancing our understanding of one of the least coherently developed of climate change policy realms – legal protection of vulnerable indigenous populations. The first part of the book provides a tremendously useful background on the cultural, policy, and legal context of indigenous peoples, with special emphasis on developing general principles for climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions. The remainder of the volume then carefully and thoroughly works through how those general principles play out for different regional indigenous populations around the globe. All of the contributions to the volume are by leading experts who bring their insights and innovative thinking to bear on a truly complex subject. Whether as a novice's starting point or expert's desktop reference, I cannot think of a more useful resource for anyone interested in climate policy for indigenous peoples.' – J.B. Ruhl, Vanderbilt University Law School, US 'In Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples, editors Randy Abate and Elizabeth Kronk have assembled a truly comprehensive and informative look at the special issues that indigenous peoples face as a result of climate impacts and an overview of the law – international and domestic, climate change and human rights, substantive and procedural – that applies to those issues. One of the great strengths of the book is that no group of indigenous people is made to stand proxy for all the others; instead, after exploring the general issues facing all indigenous peoples and the general legal strategies they use, the book focuses most of its attention on the specific climate change issues that confront particular groups – South American indigenous peoples; the various tribes of Native Americans in the US; the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, collectively as well as in respect to particular Arctic countries; Pacific Islanders; indigenous peoples in Asia; the various groups of Aborigines and Torres Islanders in Australia; the Maori on New Zealand; and several tribes in Kenya, Africa. For people interested in climate change and climate change adaptation, this book provides a unique overview of the special vulnerabilities and plights of indigenous peoples, issues that must be considered as the world works to formulate effective and protective climate change adaptation policies. For people interested in indigenous peoples and international human rights, this book paints a grim picture of the various ways in which climate change threatens this very diverse group of cultural entities and the deep knowledge of place that they usually possess, while at the same time offering hope that the law can find ways to keep them from disappearing – and, indeed, that indigenous peoples might just help the rest of us to survive, as well.' – Robin Kundis Craig, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, US 'It is one of the world's cruelest ironies that some of the earliest effects of climate change are being felt by indigenous populations around the world, even though they contributed no more than trivial amounts of the greenhouse gases that are at the root of much of the problem, and they are so politically and economically powerless that they played no role in the decisions that have led to their plight. At the same time, many of these populations are victimized by certain actions designed to reduce emissions, such as land clearing for biofuels cultivation, and restrictions on forest use. Professors Abate and Kronk have assembled a formidable collection of experts from around the world who demonstrate the diversity of challenges facing these indigenous peoples, and the opportunities and challenges in using various international and domestic legal tools to seek redress. This book will be an invaluable resource for all those examining the legal remedies that may be available, either now or as the law develops in the years to come.' – Michael B. Gerrard, Columbia Law School, US This timely volume explores the ways in which indigenous peoples across the world are challenged by climate change impacts, and discusses the legal resources available to confront those challenges. Indigenous peoples occupy a unique niche within the climate justice movement, as many indigenous communities live subsistence lifestyles that are severely disrupted by the effects of climate change. Additionally, in many parts of the world, domestic law is applied differently to indigenous peoples than it is to their non-indigenous peers, further complicating the quest for legal remedies. The contributors to this book bring a range of expert legal perspectives to this complex discussion, offering both a comprehensive explanation of climate change-related problems faced by indigenous communities and a breakdown of various real world attempts to devise workable legal solutions. Regions covered include North and South America (Brazil, Canada, the US and the Arctic), the Pacific Islands (Fiji, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia), Australia and New Zealand, Asia (China and Nepal) and Africa (Kenya). This comprehensive volume will appeal to professors and students of environmental law, indigenous law and international law, as well as practitioners and policymakers with an interest in indigenous legal issues and environmental justice.

This open access book not only describes the challenges of climate disruption, but also presents solutions. The challenges described include air pollution, climate change, extreme weather, and related health impacts that range from heat stress, vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity and chronic diseases to malnutrition and mental well-being. The influence of humans on climate change has been established through extensive published evidence and reports. However, the connections between climate change, the health of the planet and the impact on human health have not received the same level of attention. Therefore, the global focus on the public health impacts of climate change is a relatively recent area of interest. This focus is timely since scientists have concluded that changes in climate have led to new weather extremes such as floods, storms, heat waves, droughts and fires, in turn leading to more than 600,000 deaths and the displacement of nearly 4 billion people in the last 20 years. Previous work on the health impacts of climate change was limited mostly to epidemiologic approaches and outcomes and focused less on multidisciplinary, multi-faceted collaborations between physical scientists, public health researchers and policy makers. Further, there was little attention paid to faith-based and ethical approaches to the problem. The solutions and actions we explore in this book engage diverse sectors of civil society, faith leadership, and political leadership, all oriented by ethics, advocacy, and policy with a special focus on poor and vulnerable populations. The book highlights areas we think will resonate broadly with the public, faith leaders, researchers and students across disciplines including the humanities, and policy makers.

This book broadens and deepens understanding of a wide range of population-climate change linkages. Incorporating population dynamics into research, policymaking and advocacy around climate change is critical for understanding trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions, for developing and implementing adaptation plans and thus for global and national efforts to curtail this threat. The papers in this volume provide a substantive and methodological guide to the current state of knowledge on issues such as population growth and size and emissions; population vulnerability and adaptation linked to health, gender disparities and children; migration and urbanization; and the data and analytical needs for the next stages of policy-relevant research.

Policymakers around the world are increasingly concerned about the likely impact of climate change and environmental degradation on the movement of people. This book takes a hard look at the existing evidence available to policymakers in different regions of the world. How much do we really know about the impact of environmental change on migration? How will different regions of the world be affected in the future? Is there evidence to show that migration can help countries adapt to environmental change ? What types of research have been conducted, how reliable is the evidence? These are some of the questions considered in this book, which presents, for the first time, a synthesis of relevant research findings for each major region of the world. Written by regional experts, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the key findings of existing studies on the linkages between environmental change and the movement of people. More and more reports on migration and the environment are being published, but the information is often scattered between countries and within regions, and it is not always clear how much of this information is based on solid research. This book brings this evidence together for the first time, highlighting innovative studies and research gaps. In doing this, the book seeks to help decision-makers draw lessons from existing studies and to identify priorities for further research.

Climate change poses many challenges that affect society and the natural world. With these challenges, however, come opportunities to respond. By taking steps to adapt to and mitigate climate change, the risks to society and the impacts of continued climate change can be lessened. The National Climate Assessment, coordinated by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is a mandated report intended to inform response decisions. Required to be developed every four years, these reports provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of climate change impacts available for the United States, making them a unique and important climate change document. The draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) report reviewed here addresses a wide range of topics of high importance to the United States and society more broadly, extending from human health and community well-being, to the built environment, to businesses and economies, to ecosystems and natural resources. This report evaluates the draft NCA4 to determine if it meets the requirements of the federal mandate, whether it provides accurate information grounded in the scientific literature, and whether it effectively communicates climate science, impacts, and responses for general audiences including the public, decision makers, and other stakeholders.

Climate Change: Evidence and Causes is a jointly produced publication of The US National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society. Written by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists and reviewed by climate scientists and others, the publication is intended as a brief, readable reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and other individuals seeking authoritative information on the some of the questions that continue to be asked. Climate Change makes clear what is well-established and where understanding is still developing. It echoes and builds upon the long history of climate-related work from both national academies, as well as on the newest climate-change assessment from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It touches on current areas of active debate and ongoing research, such as the link between ocean heat content and the rate of warming.