17 Apr 07

The threat of climate change to the world's Indigenous Peoples has been put under the spotlight at an international symposium at Oxford University. Ethnoecology scholars and practitioners from around the world agreed that one strategy has to be better networking between the affected peoples, some of whom believe that global warming is a sign that their gods are angry.

Scientists presented new research on the impacts of climate change on the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, North America, South America, Africa and Europe where they depend directly on natural resources threatened by global warming.

The recent climate change summary report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only mentioned 'detrimental impacts to traditional indigenous ways of life' in the Polar Regions. Yet according to the organisers of the symposium, from the University's Environmental Change Institute, 'Indigenous Peoples are in the immediate frontline of vulnerability to climate change. Although they have a global geographic spread and broad cultural diversity, there is a risk that the international climate change forum has lost sight of the immense collective danger they face'.

Researchers presented new research demonstrating the scale and sweep of the problem worldwide: the Inuit of the Arctic can no longer hunt safely as the ice is breaking up around them; Pacific Islanders are losing coral atolls beneath rising seas; desert tribes in Africa are suffering heat and desiccation as never before; Caribbean islanders are pummelled by violent storms; tribes in Borneo watch as their rainforests catch fire; and Tibetans agonise over why their sacred glaciers are melting and why the alpine medicinal plants are disappearing.

On the other hand, many Indigenous Peoples are showing how resourceful they are in applying their traditional knowledge to create strategies for lessening the impacts of natural disasters. They use mangrove strips to absorb the force of tidal surges and tsunamis, they apply genetic diversity in crops to avoid total crop failure, and they migrate among habitats as disaster strikes.

Pablo Eyzaguirre from Bioversity International, an international agricultural research centre, said: 'Indigenous and traditional communities should be supported in their unique adaptation to marginal areas and ecosystem boundaries. We need to respect ecosystem buffers that also provide livelihoods, sacred spaces, and pathways for traditional peoples.'

Visiting Fellow at Oxford University Dr Jan Salick, host of the Oxford Indigenous People's Symposium, said: 'Both ethnoecological researchers and Indigenous People themselves need to network and initiate comparable climate change research and action. Indigenous Peoples must be integrated into discussions of climate change and policy formation.'