scholarly journals Indigenous Communities Outline Their Climate Data Priorities

Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Palmer

Native American tribal communities are actively engaged in adapting to climate change. What information and data will help them build resilience to the new normal?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2415
Author(s):  
Carla Johnston ◽  
Andrew Spring

Communities in Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT) are at the forefront of the global climate emergency. Yet, they are not passive victims; local-level programs are being implemented across the region to maintain livelihoods and promote adaptation. At the same time, there is a recent call within global governance literature to pay attention to how global policy is implemented and affecting people on the ground. Thinking about these two processes, we ask the question: (how) can global governance assist northern Indigenous communities in Canada in reaching their goals of adapting their food systems to climate change? To answer this question, we argue for a “community needs” approach when engaging in global governance literature and practice, which puts community priorities and decision-making first. As part of a collaborative research partnership, we highlight the experiences of Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation, located in Kakisa, NWT, Canada. We include their successes of engaging in global network building and the systemic roadblock of lack of formal land tenure. Moreover, we analyze potential opportunities for this community to engage with global governance instruments and continue connecting to global networks that further their goals related to climate change adaptation and food sovereignty.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2277436X2110059
Author(s):  
Madhulika Sahoo ◽  
Jalandhar Pradhan

The modern healthcare system often experiences difficulties in understanding and providing care to indigenous communities. This is mainly because of the cultural distance between mainstream healing methods and indigenous health belief systems. The Lancet series (2006) on indigenous health discussed the integration of Western and traditional health practices and identified the importance of this integration for betterment of the human world. To understand what health and health care signify to tribal communities in India, it is necessary to examine the whole social system and the beliefs and behaviours related to their culture that provides meaning to people. This study examines the traditional medicinal practices and socio-cultural healthcare beliefs and behaviours of diplaced tribal communities in Odisha and Chattisgarh. The current study has used the health belief model (HBM) to examine the perceived susceptibility and severity of diseases among tribal communities, pertaining to their reproductive healthcare beliefs and practices.


Human Ecology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schnegg ◽  
Coral Iris O’Brian ◽  
Inga Janina Sievert

AbstractInternational surveys suggest people increasingly agree the climate is changing and humans are the cause. One reading of this is that people have adopted the scientific point of view. Based on a sample of 28 ethnographic cases we argue that this conclusion might be premature. Communities merge scientific explanations with local knowledge in hybrid ways. This is possible because both discourses blame humans as the cause of the changes they observe. However, the specific factors or agents blamed differ in each case. Whereas scientists identify carbon dioxide producers in particular world regions, indigenous communities often blame themselves, since, in many lay ontologies, the weather is typically perceived as a local phenomenon, which rewards and punishes people for their actions. Thus, while survey results show approval of the scientific view, this agreement is often understood differently and leads to diverging ways of allocating meaning about humans and the weather.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1548
Author(s):  
Suresh Marahatta ◽  
Deepak Aryal ◽  
Laxmi Prasad Devkota ◽  
Utsav Bhattarai ◽  
Dibesh Shrestha

This study aims at analysing the impact of climate change (CC) on the river hydrology of a complex mountainous river basin—the Budhigandaki River Basin (BRB)—using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) hydrological model that was calibrated and validated in Part I of this research. A relatively new approach of selecting global climate models (GCMs) for each of the two selected RCPs, 4.5 (stabilization scenario) and 8.5 (high emission scenario), representing four extreme cases (warm-wet, cold-wet, warm-dry, and cold-dry conditions), was applied. Future climate data was bias corrected using a quantile mapping method. The bias-corrected GCM data were forced into the SWAT model one at a time to simulate the future flows of BRB for three 30-year time windows: Immediate Future (2021–2050), Mid Future (2046–2075), and Far Future (2070–2099). The projected flows were compared with the corresponding monthly, seasonal, annual, and fractional differences of extreme flows of the simulated baseline period (1983–2012). The results showed that future long-term average annual flows are expected to increase in all climatic conditions for both RCPs compared to the baseline. The range of predicted changes in future monthly, seasonal, and annual flows shows high uncertainty. The comparative frequency analysis of the annual one-day-maximum and -minimum flows shows increased high flows and decreased low flows in the future. These results imply the necessity for design modifications in hydraulic structures as well as the preference of storage over run-of-river water resources development projects in the study basin from the perspective of climate resilience.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1187
Author(s):  
Wouter Julius Smolenaars ◽  
Spyridon Paparrizos ◽  
Saskia Werners ◽  
Fulco Ludwig

In recent decades, multiple flood events have had a devastating impact on soybean production in Argentina. Recent advances suggest that the frequency and intensity of destructive flood events on the Argentinian Pampas will increase under pressure from climate change. This paper provides bottom-up insight into the flood risk for soybean production systems under climate change and the suitability of adaptation strategies in two of the most flood-prone areas of the Pampas region. The flood risk perceptions of soybean producers were explored through interviews, translated into climatic indicators and then studied using a multi-model climate data analysis. Soybean producers perceived the present flood risk for rural accessibility to be of the highest concern, especially during the harvest and sowing seasons when heavy machinery needs to reach soybean lots. An analysis of climatic change projections found a rising trend in annual and harvest precipitation and a slight drying trend during the sowing season. This indicates that the flood risk for harvest accessibility may increase under climate change. Several adaptation strategies were identified that can systemically address flood risks, but these require collaborative action and cannot be undertaken by individual producers. The results suggest that if cooperative adaptation efforts are not made in the short term, the continued increase in flood risk may force soybean producers in the case study locations to shift away from soybean towards more robust land uses.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 5042
Author(s):  
Tom Barry ◽  
Brynhildur Daviðsdóttir ◽  
Níels Einarsson ◽  
Oran R. Young

The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among Arctic states, indigenous communities, and peoples on issues of common importance. The rising geo-political importance of the Arctic and the onset of climate change has resulted in the Council becoming a focus of increasing interest from both inside and beyond the Arctic. This has resulted in new demands placed on the Council, attracting an increasing number of participants, and instigating a period of transformation as Arctic states work to find a way to balance conflicting demands to improve the Council’s effectiveness and take care of national interests. This paper considers whether, during this time of change, the Council is having an impact on the issues it was formed to address, i.e., environmental protection and sustainable development. To provide answers, it looks at how the Council reports on and evaluates progress towards the implementation of recommendations it makes regarding biodiversity, how it identifies where activities have had impacts and uncovers the mechanisms through which they were successful, to provide an insight into how the Arctic Council can be an agent of change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Wadii Snaibi

AbstractThe high plateaus of eastern Morocco are already suffering from the adverse impacts of climate change (CC), as the local populations’ livelihoods depend mainly on extensive sheep farming and therefore on natural resources. This research identifies breeders’ perceptions about CC, examines whether they correspond to the recorded climate data and analyses endogenous adaptation practices taking into account the agroecological characteristics of the studied sites and the difference between breeders’ categories based on the size of owned sheep herd. Data on perceptions and adaptation were analyzed using the Chi-square independence and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Climate data were investigated through Mann-Kendall, Pettitt and Buishand tests.Herders’ perceptions are in line with the climate analysis in term of nature and direction of observed climate variations (downward trend in rainfall and upward in temperature). In addition, there is a significant difference in the adoption frequency of adaptive strategies between the studied agroecological sub-zones (χ2 = 14.525, p <.05) due to their contrasting biophysical and socioeconomic conditions, as well as among breeders’ categories (χ2 = 10.568, p < .05) which attributed mainly to the size of sheep flock. Policy options aimed to enhance local-level adaptation should formulate site-specific adaptation programs and prioritise the small-scale herders.


Author(s):  
Ivo Machar ◽  
Marián Halás ◽  
Zdeněk Opršal

Regional climate changes impacts induce vegetation zones shift to higher altitudes in temperate landscape. This paper deals with applying of regional biogeography model of climate conditions for vegetation zones in Czechia to doctoral programme Regional Geography in Palacky University Olomouc. The model is based on general knowledge of landscape vegetation zonation. Climate data for model come from predicted validated climate database under RCP8.5 scenario since 2100. Ecological data are included in the Biogeography Register database (geobiocoenological data related to landscape for cadastral areas of the Czech Republic). Mathematical principles of modelling are based on set of software solutions with GIS. Students use the model in the frame of the course “Special Approaches to Landscape Research” not only for regional scenarios climate change impacts in landscape scale, but also for assessment of climate conditions for growing capability of agricultural crops or forest trees under climate change on regional level.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Engström ◽  
Cesar Azorin-Molina ◽  
Lennart Wern ◽  
Sverker Hellström ◽  
Christophe Sturm ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;Here we present the progress of the first work package (WP1) of the project &amp;#8220;Assessing centennial wind speed variability from a historical weather data rescue project in Sweden&amp;#8221; (WINDGUST), funded by FORMAS &amp;#8211; A Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (ref. 2019-00509); previously introduced in EGU2019-17792-1 and EGU2020-3491. In a global climate change, one of the major uncertainties on the causes driving the climate variability of winds (i.e., the &amp;#8220;stilling&amp;#8221; phenomenon and the recent &amp;#8220;recovery&amp;#8221; since the 2010s) is mainly due to short availability (i.e., since the 1960s) and low quality of observed wind records as stated by the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The WINDGUST is a joint initiative between the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) and the University of Gothenburg aimed at filling the key gap of short availability and low quality of wind datasets, and improve the limited knowledge on the causes driving wind speed variability in a changing climate across Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;During 2020, we worked in WP1 to rescue historical wind speed series available in the old weather archives at SMHI for the 1920s-1930s. In the process we followed the &amp;#8220;Guidelines on Best Practices for Climate Data Rescue&amp;#8221; of the World Meteorological Organization. Our protocol consisted on: (i) designing a template for digitization; (ii) digitizing papers by an imaging process based on scanning and photographs; and (iii) typing numbers of wind speed data into the template. We will report the advances and current status, challenges and experiences learned during the development of WP1. Until new year 2020/2021 eight out of thirteen selected stations spanning over the years 1925 to 1948 have been scanned and digitized by three staff members of SMHI during 1,660 manhours.&lt;/p&gt;


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