Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, and Collective Action

Hypatia ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Powys Whyte

Indigenous peoples must adapt to current and coming climate‐induced environmental changes like sea‐level rise, glacier retreat, and shifts in the ranges of important species. For some indigenous peoples, such changes can disrupt the continuance of the systems of responsibilities that their communities rely on self‐consciously for living lives closely connected to the earth. Within this domain of indigeneity, some indigenous women take seriously the responsibilities that they may perceive they have as members of their communities. For the indigenous women who have such outlooks, responsibilities that they assume in their communities expose them to harms stemming from climate change impacts and other environmental changes. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to take on leadership positions in efforts at climate change adaptation and mitigation. I show why, at least for some indigenous women, this is an important way of framing the climate change impacts that affect them. I then argue that there is an important implication in this conversation for how we understand the political responsibilities of nonindigenous parties for supporting distinctly indigenous efforts at climate change adaptation and mitigation.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itxaso Ruiz ◽  
María José Sanz

<p>Rural areas of the Mediterranean watersheds face great environmental challenges, where climate change impacts the water cycle, the soil, and biodiversity, which are often priority issues for adaptation. These, have been aggravated by historical land management practices trends. In this context, we propose Nature Based Solutions (NBS) in the form of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) actions at the watershed scale to achieve climate change adaptation and mitigation while promoting other ecosystem services.</p><p>SLM actions are local adaptation practices that promote sustainable rural development. Thus, we seek the combination of several actions to achieve regional (watershed scale) more integrated approaches. With this study, we aim at proving that NBS, and thus SLM, is a successful tool for alleviating climate change impacts (i.e. water scarcity, enhanced erosion, biodiversity decline) while promoting the role of land in mitigation and enhancing biodiversity in the rural Mediterranean areas.</p><p>For this, we propose a novel conceptualization of SLM actions that moves from their local application and evaluation to the regional more systemic approaches through their combination. Results show synergies in the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere, allow for the upscaling of SLM through systemic approaches and point at direct contributions to several Sustainable Development Goals.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lane ◽  
Allison Chatrchyan ◽  
Daniel Tobin ◽  
Kaila Thorn ◽  
Shorna Allred ◽  
...  

AbstractClimate change impacts on agriculture have been intensifying in the Northeastern United States. In order to encourage the adoption of climate change adaptation and mitigation practices by farmers, it is critical to understand their perspectives on the risks they face and actions they are taking. However, very few empirical studies have considered how farmers are interpreting and responding to climate impacts, risks and opportunities in the Northeast. This study investigates farmer views and decisions related to climate change using data from six farmer focus groups conducted across New York and Pennsylvania. The study examined how farmers perceived climate impacts on their farms, the practices they are willing to adopt, and how perceived risks and vulnerability affect farmers’ decision-making related to adaptation and mitigation strategies. Although farmers articulated concern regarding climate impacts, they also made clear that other business pressures, such as profitability, market conditions, labor availability or government regulations were often more critical issues that affected their decision-making. Decisions about adopting climate change adaptation and mitigation practices vary widely, and personal experience with extreme weather and changing seasons affected decision-making. The findings from this study provide improved understanding of farmers’ needs and priorities, which can help guide land-grant researchers, extension and policymakers in their efforts to develop and coordinate a comprehensive strategy to address climate change impacts on agriculture in the Northeast.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Keskinen ◽  
S. Chinvanno ◽  
M. Kummu ◽  
P. Nuorteva ◽  
A. Snidvongs ◽  
...  

Adaptation to climate change has become one of the focal points of current development discussion. This article summarises the findings from a multidisciplinary research project looking at climate change impacts and adaptation in the Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia. The research highlights the central role that the hydrological cycle has in mediating climate change impacts on ecosystems and societies. The findings indicate that climate change should not be studied in isolation, as there are several other factors that are affecting the hydrological cycle. In the Mekong, the most important such factor is the on-going hydropower development that is likely to induce changes at least as radical as climate change, but with shorter timescales. The article concludes that climate change adaptation should broaden its view to consider environmental changes likely to occur due to different factors at various spatial and temporal scales. It is also important to recognise that climate change adaptation is a dynamic, development-orientated process that should consider also broader socio-political context. To enable this, we propose that an area-based adaptation approach should be used more actively to complement the dominant sector-based approaches.


Author(s):  
Sarah Blodgett Bermeo

This chapter introduces the role of development as a self-interested policy pursued by industrialized states in an increasingly connected world. As such, it is differentiated from traditional geopolitical accounts of interactions between industrialized and developing states as well as from assertions that the increased focus on development stems from altruistic motivations. The concept of targeted development—pursuing development abroad when and where it serves the interests of the policymaking states—is introduced and defined. The issue areas covered in the book—foreign aid, trade agreements between industrialized and developing countries, and finance for climate change adaptation and mitigation—are introduced. The preference for bilateral, rather than multilateral, action is discussed.


Author(s):  
Leonardo Zea-Reyes ◽  
Veronica Olivotto ◽  
Sylvia I. Bergh

AbstractCities around the world are confronted with the need to put in place climate adaptation policies to protect citizens and properties from climate change impacts. This article applies components of the framework developed by Moser and Ekström (2010) onto empirical qualitative data to diagnose institutional barriers to climate change adaptation in the Municipality of Beirut, Lebanon. Our approach reveals the presence of two vicious cycles influencing each other. In the first cycle, the root cause barrier is major political interference generating competing priorities and poor individual interest in climate change. A second vicious cycle is derived from feedbacks caused by the first and leading to the absence of a dedicated department where sector specific climate risk information is gathered and shared with other departments, limited knowledge and scientific understanding, as well as a distorted framing or vision, where climate change is considered unrelated to other issues and is to be dealt with at higher levels of government. The article also highlights the need to analyze interlinkages between barriers in order to suggest how to overcome them. The most common way to overcome barriers according to interviewees is through national and international support followed by the creation of a data bank. These opportunities could be explored by national and international policy-makers to break the deadlock in Beirut.


2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110224
Author(s):  
Danielle Emma Johnson ◽  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher

Although Indigenous peoples’ perspectives and concerns have not always been accommodated in climate change adaptation research and practice, a burgeoning literature is helping to reframe and decolonise climate adaptation in line with Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. In this review, we bring together climate adaptation, decolonising and intersectional scholarship to chart the progress that has been made in better analysing and responding to climate change in Indigenous contexts. We identify a wealth of literature helping to decolonise climate adaptation scholarship and praxis by attending to colonial and neo-colonial injustices implicated in Indigenous peoples’ climate vulnerability, taking seriously Indigenous peoples’ relational ontologies, and promoting adaptation that draws on Indigenous capacities and aspirations for self-determination and cultural continuity. Despite calls to interrogate heterogenous experiences of climate change within Indigenous communities, the decolonising climate and adaptation scholarship has made limited advances in this area. We examine the small body of research that takes an intersectional approach to climate adaptation and explores how the multiple subjectivities and identities that Indigenous peoples occupy produce unique vulnerabilities, capacities and encounters with adaptation policy. We suggest the field might be expanded by drawing on related studies from Indigenous development, natural resource management, conservation, feminism, health and food sovereignty. Greater engagement with intersectionality works to drive innovation in decolonising climate adaptation scholarship and practice. It can mitigate the risk of maladaptation, avoid entrenchment of inequitable power dynamics, and ensures that even the most marginal groups within Indigenous communities benefit from adaptation policies and programmes.


Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Kenshi Baba ◽  
Eri Amanuma ◽  
Motoko Kosugi

This study set up online virtual communities consisting of farmers and stakeholders involved in agriculture and nonfarmers living in rural areas interested in agricultural production. We conducted a deliberation within the communities for 14 days on identifying important climate change adaptation policies for 30 years later under climate change impacts with the relevant knowledge from experts. During the deliberation, after self-introduction took place including the realization of climate change impacts, the participants were provided with the expert knowledge on impacts of climate change, adaptation policies in agricultural sector and so on, then the following discussions covered issues such as the distribution of agricultural produce, insufficient successors, and support for farmers, such as impacts on crops during disasters concerning future scenarios. Attitude changes before and after deliberation were observed in terms of the pros and cons of climate change adaptation policies in agriculture and rural areas, but statistically significant differences were not observed. On the other hand, a statistically significant change was observed in some determinants of the pros and cons, such as the perceived effectiveness and goal intention. This structural change results from that the participants became aware of a different perspective through deliberation. Thus, the online deliberation process was effective to some extent in increasing knowledge and promoting deeper understanding among participants during inquiry and reasoning was deepened in the process as they listened to the opinions of others in a different position with a different idea as well as read and search for scientific findings and information provided by experts.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document